Tourist could be dangerous if left on the lead in Secretariat

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – The first time Bill Mott won Arlington’s Secretariat Stakes, the race was at Hawthorne.

It was 1985, the summer the Arlington grandstand burned to the ground. Mott, then 32, was in his sixth year as a head trainer, and he had his string stabled in Chicago.

“We shipped over to Hawthorne to run,” Mott said. “I think we might have had a few stalls over there, too.”

That year’s Secretariat was a roughly run race. Randy Romero waited and waited for racing room on the Mott-trained, John Franks-owned Derby Wish, and finally found a hole deep in the stretch. Saturday, when Mott tries to win the Secretariat, the race will be at Arlington, and unlike Derby Wish, this Mott horse has a good chance to stay out of trouble.

Tourist lost the first four races of his career but is 3 for 3 since Mott switched him to turf. Tourist raced head and head for the lead at Gulfstream in his first grass win, a maiden race, but in a Belmont allowance race in June and in the Sir Cat Stakes on July 18 at Saratoga, Tourist went straight to the lead and never looked back.

“He’s got very good early speed,” said Mott, who won a second Secretariat in 2005 with Gun Salute. “Looking at the past performances, I’d say there’s a good possibility he’ll be on the lead.”

Tourist, to be ridden by Joel Rosario, is one of nine 3-year-olds expected to start in the Secretariat, and he figures to be no worse than second choice behind the Aidan O’Brien-trained Adelaide. O’Brien has a second horse for the race, Belisarius, whose questionable qualifications as a Grade 1 horse and recent front-running tactics suggest he could serve as a rabbit for Adelaide.

But even a rabbit might have trouble keeping up with Tourist, who went a half-mile in 47.24 seconds in the Sir Cat and showed no signs of weariness at the finish. Tourist, a Tiznow colt owned by Gary Barber and WinStar Farm, showed enough ability training on dirt and racing on it as a 2-year-old that Mott gave him four chances to win a maiden race, but after a loss as the favorite on the inner-dirt track at Aqueduct, Tourist was sent to Florida for a surface switch.

“It wasn’t that obvious in the beginning he’d be a turf specialist,” Mott said. “He kept us thinking he could run well on dirt, too.”

Tourist’s last two wins came in one-mile races, and he’ll have to sustain his brilliance an additional quarter-mile in the Secretariat. “A mile and a quarter, that’s a whole different ball game,” Mott said.