Who Took the Money runs his way into a future on turf
Who Took the Money, making just his second grass start, won the Louisiana Champions Day Turf so impressively Saturday that he’ll get a chance to compete in open grass stakes this winter.
Who Took the Money, a 3-year-old by Street Boss, had run decently facing open allowance horses in his lone previous grass race, but his performance Saturday hit a much higher level. About 13 lengths behind the leader at the quarter pole, Who Took the Money closed furiously and won by nearly six lengths, clocking 29.62 seconds for his final five-sixteenths. That finish was a second faster than anyone else in the race, and Who Took the Money, who got his last half-furlong in about 5.80, was going much faster at the sixteenth pole than he was at the top of the stretch.
Who Took the Money went into Champions Day off a 10th-place finish over a sloppy track in a Churchill Downs allowance on Nov. 25.
“We ran him back pretty quick after he ran so bad in the slop,” said Bret Calhoun, who trains Who Took the Money for Chester Thomas’s Allied Racing Stable. “He still ran a career-best.”
Now, Calhoun and Thomas have to decide whether to wheel Who Took the Money back Dec. 27 in the $75,000 Woodchopper, a grass route restricted to 3-year-olds, or wait and face older horses in a race like the $100,000 Bradley on Jan. 22. Calhoun already plans to start Excess Magic in the Woodchopper. Who Took the Money got a career-best 92 Beyer Speed Figure on Saturday, and Calhoun believes the gelding still has room to improve.
Meanwhile, Calhoun said that Silver Dust will return for an 8-year-old campaign in 2022, when, with any success at all, he’ll top $1 million in career earnings. Silver Dust hasn’t started since a poor performance six months ago in the Stephen Foster Stakes and is in light training at the Copper Crowne Training Center in Opelousas, La.