Will Call arrives on time in Twin Spires Turf Sprint
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LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Will Call didn’t even start in a grass race until this past December, and his stakes debut last month at Keeneland didn’t work out at all, but Will Call won the Grade 3, $200,000 Twin Spires Turf Sprint on Friday at Churchill Downs like he could be a force in the turf-sprint division the rest of the year.
Racing from farther off the pace than he’d ever been after breaking from post 9, Will Call ($15.60) rallied into position at the top of the homestretch and closed the deal with a strong outside run through the final furlong. He and jockey Shaun Bridgmohan caught the leaders at the sixteenth pole and won going away, coming home 1 1/4 lengths in front of longshot Kid Perfect. Bucchero was another neck back in third, with the late-running filly Delectation a head farther back in fourth.
“From an outside post, I took a little hold of him before the turn and tried to maneuver my way into position,” said Bridgmohan.
The tactics worked, as the pace horses backed up and Will Call got a clean run to the wire. After Restless Rambler, Riser, and Latent Revenge dueled through splits of 21.92 and 44.81 seconds, Will Call stopped the timer in 56.68 seconds for five furlongs on a firm turf course.
The victory was particularly satisfying for the Klein family, the Louisville natives who bred and own Will Call, a 4-year-old son of Country Day and the More than Ready mare Vote Early. The Kleins also campaigned Country Day, Vote Early, and even Vote Early’s dam, Mail It In.
That lineage goes back many years, but it was after Will Call won a third-level allowance race in January at Fair Grounds, running his turf record to two wins from two starts, that trainer Brad Cox, another Louisville native, thought he might have unearthed a real horse.
“When he won the ‘three-other-than’ at Fair Grounds, I thought it was a very solid group of horses he beat, and he beat them the right way. I thought that day this is going to be a stakes horse,” Cox said.
Will Call was second to the talented turf sprinter Holding Gold while making his stakes debut in the Colonel Power on Feb. 17 at Fair Grounds, but he floundered over a soft course in the Shakertown Stakes at Keeneland last month, checking in a distant ninth.
“We had a lot of confidence in him going into the Keeneland race, and for whatever reason, it didn’t work out that day,” Cox said. “I really liked this horse coming into this race. His two works on this turf course had been fantastic. He broke off nice and easy, settled, and really fired home – just like he ran today.”
Cox said it’s reasonable to look to November and the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint over the Churchill course with Will Call, and that in the shorter term, the Jaipur on Belmont Stakes Day seemed a logical option to consider.
Kid Perfect, an 18-1 chance, got a great inside stalking trip under Florent Geroux, split tiring horses in midstretch and was briefly on terms with the winner before being outfinished. Bucchero stalked the pace on the outside, bumped soundly with the one-paced 2-1 favorite, Vision Perfect (who finished seventh), and couldn’t go with the winner. Delectation broke slowly, was last down the backstretch while saving ground, wheeled out at the three-sixteenths pole, and couldn’t quite quicken in time.
