War Story joins likely field for Pegasus World Cup

The owners of stakes winner War Story and Kentucky pizza-franchise owner Dan Schafer have reached an agreement to start the 4-year-old gelding in the Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 28 at Gulfstream Park near Miami, using Schafer’s $1 million slot in the race.

War Story, owned by Ron Paolucci’s Loooch Racing Stable and several other partners, most recently won the Queens County Stakes at Aqueduct on Dec. 17, and earlier this year finished eighth of nine in the Nov. 5 Breeders’ Cup Classic, beaten 25 lengths. He will ship from his base at Parx Racing near Philadelphia several weeks before the Pegasus to begin preparations for the race, Paolucci said.

War Story becomes the seventh horse to be announced as a solid contender for the $12 million Pegasus, a 1 1/8-mile race in which the entire purse is being funded by the purchase of 12 individual starting slots at a cost of $1 million each. The leading contenders for the race are Arrogate and California Chrome, the one-two finishers in the Classic, and their presence is quickly turning the negotiations over the remaining slots into a market heavily skewed toward the owners of horses willing to run.

Paolucci said that he and Schafer began talking about securing an agreement for War Story to start in the Pegasus shortly before the Queens County. He said he told Schafer prior to the Queens County that if War Story “doesn’t dominate in this race, just lose my number.” War Story won the race by 7 3/4 lengths on the lead on a track rated good.

Schafer has said that he is a 33-year-old horseracing fan who lives in northern Kentucky and who had never invested any money in horse ownership prior to buying the slot earlier this year. He said he owns eight pizza franchises, five in northern Kentucky. He did not return phone calls on Friday.

Paolucci said the partnership is structured as a revenue-sharing deal and that War Story’s owners will not receive any proceeds from the Pegasus unless the horse finishes first, second, or third. The first-place purse is $7 million, the second-place purse is $1.75 million, and the third-place purse is $1 million. Every other horse will receive $250,000 for running.

“Dan asked me, ‘Do you think you have any chance at all to win the race?’ ” Paolucci said. “I told him, ‘We have more than a puncher’s chance.’ And he said, ‘You are the first person to tell me that.’ So he said he was going with me.”

War Story has a record of four wins from 14 starts, and he finished 16th in the 2015 Kentucky Derby. Paolucci said the horse has been training much better over the past two months after blinkers were removed and his ears stuffed with wadding. He said he is hoping that the horse draws an inside post, while Arrogate and California Chrome draw outside posts.

“If we get 1, 2, 3, or 4, we’re gone,” he said.

Paolucci also said that he was open to entertaining additional offers by Pegasus slot owners to start Conquest Enforcer, the recent winner of the Grade 2 Mathis Brothers Mile Stakes at Santa Anita. Loooch Racing and other partners purchased the horse out of the Conquest Stables dispersal at the Keeneland November breeding stock sale for $785,000.

In addition, Paolucci said he is in the process of closing a private deal for a horse in California to act as a backup to War Story in the Pegasus. Under the Pegasus rules, each slot owner can designate a horse as a backup entry in case the first horse has to scratch from the race.