Well Defined can lift O'Connell's spirits by winning Mucho Macho Man

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – These are bittersweet times for Kathleen O’Connell. She just concluded one of the most productive seasons of her 38-year training career, but on the personal side of things, the losses are mounting.

Reached Wednesday morning by phone, O’Connell was tending to her 90-year-old mother, Arlene, who was gravely ill in the intensive-care unit of a Michigan hospital. Heavily weighted with sadness, the words barely made their way to Florida.

“I don’t think she’s going to make it,” said O’Connell. “I flew in to Lansing last night. It’s very hard.”

The emotional wounds are still raw for O’Connell, whose 93-year-old father, Joseph, died Oct. 1. Against that difficult backdrop, horse racing might seem trivial – although, perhaps as a means of putting grim reality aside for a moment, O’Connell was only too willing to briefly discuss the prospects of Well Defined making his 3-year-old debut Saturday in the $100,000 Mucho Macho Man at Gulfstream Park.

“We’re expecting a big effort,” she said.

Well Defined, bred and owned by the Stonehedge LLC of Gilbert Campbell, was a romping winner of the $400,000 In Reality at Gulfstream in late September and a primary contributor to an outstanding 2018 for O’Connell: 102 wins and more than $2.4 million in stable earnings, her second highest in both categories.

Well Defined will be looking to rebound off a 12th-place finish as a 9-1 shot in the Nov. 3 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, a race in which O’Connell said the colt was “compromised at the start and really never had much chance afterward.”

“He broke so hard that his hind end came out from under him, and then he was in a pocket and really never did much running when it counted,” she said. “We know he’s better than that.”

Well Defined will be among the challengers to Champagne runner-up Code of Honor in the one-mile Mucho Macho Man, for which entries were drawn late Wednesday. Other notables expected to enter included Final Jeopardy, Garter and Tie, Mihos, and Zenden.

The Mucho Macho Man serves as a lead-in to the Florida Derby series of races during the four-month championship meet. The first race in the series is the Grade 2 Holy Bull on Feb. 2, followed by the March 2 Fountain of Youth and March 30 Florida Derby.

Named for the winner of the 2013 Breeders’ Cup Classic, the Mucho Macho Man is one of five stakes, all for 3-year-olds, to be run here Saturday. The others are two sets of twins: the $100,000 Kitten’s Joy and the $100,000 Ginger Brew (fillies), both set for 7 1/2 furlongs on the turf, and the $75,000 Limehouse and $75,000 Glitter Woman (fillies), both at six furlongs on the main track.

Post time for the 11-race Saturday card will be noon Eastern.

:: Want to get the latest news with your past performances? Try DRF’s new digital PPs