Zito celebrates 50 years of Keeneland

LEXINGTON, Ky. – Nick Zito had just sent a horse out for work at Keeneland early Friday when Nyquist started into his first breeze since his Florida Derby triumph.

“I was very impressed. I thought he worked at least a mile,” Zito said, referring to the official clocking of five furlongs in 1:02.60. “I’m watching close, and the horse is really into it before the wire the first time. He came all the way around and had every right to chuck it and didn’t chuck it at all. He’s a good horse.”

Nyquist is the unbeaten favorite for the Kentucky Derby, a race that Zito knows a little something about. Zito has won two of them, with Strike the Gold (1991) and Go for Gin (1994), and he’s tied for third for the most Derby starters (26). In 2005, the same year he was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame, Zito ran a record-tying five Derby starters.

Zito also knows about Keeneland. In fact, not only does 2016 represent the 25-year anniversary of Strike the Gold being the last horse to sweep the Blue Grass Stakes and Derby, but it also marks 50 years since Zito first came here from his native New York.

“I came here in the fall of 1966 with a trainer named Woods Garth,” Zito recalled. “We were supposed to win the Spinster with a filly named Summer Scandal, who’d just won the Top Flight. I was 18 years old and told my mom and dad and brothers goodbye, that I was going to Kentucky on a horse van. I’d been walking hots for Buddy Jacobson. They said be careful and whatever.”

Zito said that somewhere in the Keeneland library there exists a photo of him in the winner’s circle from an otherwise-forgettable race at that 1966 fall meet. (Alas, Summer Scandal ran third to Open Fire in the Spinster.)

“I had black hair, and the valet wore a tie,” he said. “I was in heaven. One day, I walked from Keeneland over to Calumet Farm, and there just wasn’t much around here – at all. Maybe a post office, not much. It was a place I immediately fell in love with.”

Zito said that when he won the Blue Grass 25 years later, Ted Bassett, the former Keeneland board chairman who had been made aware of Zito’s first visit in 1966, greeted him with, “Welcome home.”

“That really got me,” said Zito.

Now a remarkably spry 68, Zito is determined to prove that his legacy in racing is not complete. Through Thursday, he had three wins and two seconds from his first six starters at this spring meet, including a pair of allowance victories with West Coast Chick and Catholic Cowboy.

“We’re not ancient,” he said. “I tell people, ‘We may be at the top of the stretch, but the last time I looked, we still had a quarter-mile to go.’ ”

◗ After the Sunday card, the 16-day Keeneland spring meet will be exactly halfway done – but the stakes schedule will be virtually tapped out.

Only three of 16 stakes will remain: the Grade 3 Doubledogdare on Friday, the Grade 3 Elkhorn on Saturday, and the Grade 3 Bewitch on closing day, April 29.

The 1 1/16-mile Doubledogdare is expected to feature a matchup of I’m a Chatterbox and Ahh Chocolate. Entries will be drawn Tuesday.