Wright class droppers may wake up
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Just two months ago, a pair of Blaine Wright trainees, 3-year-old Goin’ South and 4-year-old Tougherthantherest, looked poised to race in stakes on Longacres Mile Day. Now, after a pair of last-out duds, Wright is trying to figure out what each horse is made of as he stretches both out to a mile for the first time this year on Saturday.
On June 22, Goin’ South nearly defeated his sensational stablemate Si That Tiger in the $50,000 Auburn Stakes at six furlongs for 3-year-olds, earning a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 81. On July 12, he came back to run an uninspired but still respectable third in a conditioned allowance, earning a 62 Beyer over six furlongs.
Then the bottom fell out. Again facing Si That Tiger and other classy rivals in the $50,000 Irish Day Stakes on July 27, Goin’ South finished ninth, beaten 16 lengths by his stablemate and earning a mere 48 Beyer. On Saturday, Wright is dropping him to the $15,000 claiming level in the fifth race on an eight-race card. Goin’ South will be going two turns for the first time since finishing second in a maiden special weight at Fresno last September.
“He’s been horribly bad in the gate and maybe was just kind of over his head,” Wright said. “Running third, he didn’t run too bad, but his last race was horrible.”
Wright has a simpler explanation for why Tougherthantherest went from earning a career-best 78 Beyer for a game fifth-place finish in the June 22 Budweiser Stakes to a 43 while being trounced by 21 3/4 lengths in the Governor’s Stakes on July 20.
“He got in a stupid speed duel last time, which just burnt the horse up. You give jocks instructions and sometimes they don’t follow them,” Wright said.
Alex Cruz, who emerged relatively unscathed from a nasty fifth-race spill and a quick trip to the hospital on Sunday, will replace Silvio Amador aboard Tougherthantherest in Saturday’s seventh race, a conditioned allowance with a $25,000 purse that’s attracted a field of nine. The race is the Darrell LaFrance Purse, named after a beloved groom on the Emerald backstretch who died last fall after tending to racehorses for a half-century.
Amador retains the mount on another Wright trainee in race 7, Executive Chef, an ultra-consistent router at this level who beat Its Kraken Time, also entered in race 7, by a neck last out Aug. 3. Executive Chef is 4-2-2-0 at one mile.
Yet another Wright trainee, Tax Code, will start in post 8, just to the outside of Executive Chef. A lightly raced 6-year-old who’s 10-3-3-2 at Emerald, Tax Code boasts the field’s highest Beyer at 82 but has never raced longer than 6 1/2 furlongs.
Wright thinks that Tax Code trains like he might appreciate the extra distance. And, besides, with Sept. 7 being the final day of the Emerald meet, it’s time to throw a dart or two.
“We wanted to stretch him out last year and never got the opportunity,” Wright said. “This seemed about the right time before the end of the year to try and find out.”
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