Small but mighty, Imperial Hint takes third swing at Breeders' Cup Sprint

ARCADIA, Calif. – You could call him “Pinto Bean” and it would fit, but then nobody would call their top-class racehorse anything like that, so trainer Luis Carvajal Jr. settled on “Little Rocket.”

If he could limbo a little, Imperial Hint, 6, might walk clean underneath the largest Thoroughbreds. Out on the racetrack he just runs them over.

He’s not just small, he’s unusual looking, a bowling ball of a being, short legs poking out of a fullback’s torso so layered with muscle Imperial Hint looks almost as wide as tall.

“He’s very, very strong,” said Carvajal. “He loves to run. He’s all racehorse.”

The Little Rocket can fly. He’s won 14 of 23 starts, including three Grade 1’s. You could stack up all the Benjamins he’s earned – just shy of $2.2 million – and they’d tower over his withers. The Rocket has taken Carvajal, his trainer, and 87-year-old owner, Raymond Mamone, places they’ve never been in racing.

His trajectory Saturday leads them Saturday to a familiar spot – the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

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Third in the race with an excuse last year, Imperial Hint finished an excellent second to the champion Roy H two years ago at Del Mar.

Sometimes in the Sprint, third time is a charm. The great Kona Gold finished third in the 1998, second in 1999, and won in 2000.

Little Rocket could run big this weekend and still lose. This Sprint is a murderer’s row – Mitole, Shancealot, Catalina Cruiser.

In fact, Imperial Hint is overdue some luck in these world-class sprints. At Del Mar in 2017, Imperial Hint had post 10 but wound up alone on the lead, the horse nearest the inside rail, past the quarter pole as Roy H loomed on a track surface obviously biased toward the outside lanes Roy H was occupying.

At the 2018 Breeders’ Cup, Imperial Hint didn’t train like himself after arriving at Churchill and a couple days before the Sprint he had a mild case of tying-up (muscle cramping causing a stiff walk) after morning exercise.

“Churchill is a beautiful track, but I told them after last year even if they had a two-horse stakes race, I probably wouldn’t go,” said Carvajal.

In the Dubai Golden Shaheen at Meydan this past March, Imperial Hint broke from tricky post 1 and battled through a claustrophobic inside-and-behind trip as X Y Jet coasted to victory on the lead.

That tough trip was immeasurably better than the one Imperial Hint and Carvajal took to Dubai in 2017. Imperial Hint arrived with a shipping fever, had to be scratched from the Golden Shaheen, and developed pneumonia. He stayed in Dubai another month until he’d healed enough to travel.

“Bob Baffert won the World Cup with Arrogate and then everybody went home! I was the only one left, one other Arabian horse in the barn,” Carvajal said.

Mamone never had a horse anywhere near this good during 40 years as an owner and Carvajal, a 47-year-old Chilean native, has trained one graded-stakes winner – Imperial Hint – since he moved from assistant to head trainer in 2006 when his boss, trainer Bob Durso, retired.

It sounds rude when people talk about a horse’s pedigree as being by nothing and out of nothing, but in a sense that’s literally true of Imperial Hint. Mamone gifted his dam, Royal Hint, to Bert Pilcher of Shade Tree Thoroughbreds near Ocala, Fla., after Royal Hint failed to get in foal a couple years. Pilcher won raffle offering a free season to the very modest Florida stallion Imperialism and used it on Royal Hint.

The resulting offspring was a 2-year-old when Carvajal saw him work three furlongs at Shade Tree while scouting another filly Mamone might have wanted to buy. Pass on that one, Carvajal told Mamone.

“But there’s another horse out of your own mare you gave away,” Carvajal reported back to Mamone. “He’s kind of tiny and maybe a little sway-backed. Maybe you can get a good deal.”

The best horse in his barn can fly, and so can Carvajal, who trained to become a pilot, getting private single-engine, commercial multi-engine, and instrument licenses when he was an assistant to Durso in Florida. He was on the verge of changing careers when Durso suggested he wait a year and take over the stable.

Carvajal, even after Imperial Hint’s exploits, trains only a 12-horse string based this summer and fall at Monmouth Park. Carvajal never won more than 16 races in a season nor did his annual stable earnings top $400,000 until Imperial Hint came along. Carvajal and Mamone, who are close, could have sold the Little Rocket a long time ago. He won his career debut in February 2016 at Tampa by more than four lengths and in a fast time, and by the end of the day Carvajal’s phone was ringing with purchase offers. The number went higher after an even faster second-start win, and before the 2017 Breeders’ Cup, Mamone was offered $2 million, Carvajal said.

“A different owner would at least have sold half. Rocket would have been in a big barn in New York or something,” Carvajal said. “But he trusted me, and I’ve always appreciated that. He’s my client but he’s also my good friend. They came with the offer and Mr. Mamone said, ‘Luis, what am I going to do with the money? I’m 85 years old. I’m not going to go out there and buy a Lamborghini. I’m not going to buy a half-million horse. I’m going to go out there and enjoy this.’ ”

Three months ago, you wouldn’t have thought Imperial Hint had a chance this Saturday. Carvajal heard broadcasters at Saratoga suggesting before the July 28 Vanderbilt that the Little Rocket was out of fuel. On form, it looked possible. He hadn’t run a top race in a year and was starting for the first time since Dubai in March. Instead, the Little Rocket went turbo. Yes, he rode the wave of an outside bias, and Mitole, who finished third, was stuck near a dead rail and ran somewhat flat on the day. Still, Imperial Hint won by four lengths in a monster performance. His 114 Beyer Speed Figure, tied for second-best in North America this year, was based on a raw time of 1:07.92, a Saratoga track record.

“So many great horses, so many six-furlong races,” said Carvajal. “To run faster than anyone else, sometimes there’s no words to describe a feeling. Your horse is jogging back and the people in New York are giving a standing ovation for my little horse, for an unknown trainer, unknown owner, a barely known sire. I guess that’s why every little trainer with six horses or eight horses gets up every day.”