Touchuponastar earns 108 Beyer in Delta Mile
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Touchuponastar earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 108 last Saturday night, when he improved his Delta Downs record to 8 for 9 while defeating open company in the $100,000 Delta Mile. Plans call for him to return to the Louisiana-bred ranks for the $150,000 Champions Day Classic on Dec. 13 at Fair Grounds.
“We’ll point towards that,” Jake Delhomme, the retired NFL quarterback who owns Touchuponastar, said Tuesday. “It’s really good timing. We’ll see how it all shakes out. He’ll let us know.”
Touchuponastar, a 6-year-old who has won the Champions Day Classic the last three years, has established himself as one of the top Louisiana-breds in history. The Grade 2 winner of $1.5 million ranks fourth in all-time earnings among Louisiana-breds.
Over the last four years, he’s also become one of the most prolific runners to ever compete at the 50-year-old Delta Downs. Touchuponastar set a track record winning the $100,000 Gold Cup in October and just missed another when romping by 10 lengths in winning a second career Delta Mile on Saturday.
It’s a development Delhomme savors as he grew up in a family that regularly raced at Delta. The lessons from that time are the ones he and his brother, trainer Jeff Delhomme, apply to Touchuponastar.
“We gave him a little time off after the Steve Sexton Mile” in May, Delhomme said. “He was 100 percent sound. I guess I’ve seen that throughout my life with my Dad and the Quarter Horses because way back when, when I was a kid, it was only Delta Downs that ran the Quarter Horses. So, you ran from April through Labor Day and you had to wait and the horses got turned out. The horses lasted a long time.
“Ever since I was a child, we were strictly Quarter Horses up until 1993. That was kind of my family,” Delhomme continued. “My grandfather, he used to own a couple of the bush tracks way back when in our area. We had a barn and a little track across the street. We always loved it. We made the switch over [to Thoroughbreds] in 1993. Certainly, football gave me a chance to expand on it, especially once I was done. So, I’ve been going to Delta Downs for a long time, since I was a kid.”
And now, as the owner of one of the best horses to ever race in Vinton, La.
◗ Remington Park announced Saturday that there would be no more turf racing for the season that runs into December.
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