From the Aug. 28, 2024 edition of The Saratoga Special newspaper.
Halfway through a six-and-a-half-minute walk up the Saratoga Race Course stretch late Saturday evening, Juan Aguayo and Byron Lopez high-fived each other over Fierceness’ wet neck. In a single moment of peace, joy and pride among near-bedlam, they smiled, laughed, patted their horse and soaked in the achievement of a Travers Stakes win.
Foreman and groom, respectively, Aguayo and Lopez each have more than two decades of experience with trainer Todd Pletcher. In tenures filled with them, Saturday was a signature moment – big stage, big race, big horse and a whole lot of hard work.
“It’s so exciting,” said Aguayo. “I have a lot of pride. You can’t imagine how proud of him we are. You want him to get his chance and to make the most of it. He did.”
Champion 2-year-old male of 2023, Fierceness did indeed. He and jockey John Velazquez seized control on the final turn and then fought off a challenge from star filly Thorpedo Anna to win the $1.25 million race by a head. It was the City Of Light colt’s third Grade 1 win, joining the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last year and the Florida Derby this year. The Travers win, the third each for Pletcher and Velazquez, marked the first time Fierceness captured back-to-back races of any kind. In seven prior starts, he’d alternated wins with losses and he came into Saturday off a victory in the Grade 2 Jim Dandy Stakes here July 27.
The heretofore inconsistent form was typically left to Pletcher, Velazquez and owner Mike Repole to explain, but it weighed on the people who spend the most time with the bay colt too.
“In the barn, you don’t even know him or know that he’s that good,” Aguayo said. “He just walks around like a normal horse. Everybody comes to the barn and asks to see Fierceness and they don’t know that he just passed in front of them. They think, ‘Big race’ and they expect Fierceness to be a big horse but he is like, ‘OK, I am here.’ ”
Everybody knew who he was Saturday.
That mattered to Aguayo and Lopez. As they led him up the stretch toward the test barn, fans on the grandstand apron called out, set up commemorative photos – think of a family, standing by the fence, with a Travers winner walking past in the background in perfect summer light – and offered a variety of cheers and congratulations.
“Good job, baby.”
“All the way.”
“You the man, Fierceness.”
“Wow, wow, wow.”
“Get ready, here he comes . . . smile.”
“Wooooh.”
“Good job getting that win.”
“Yo, Fierceness.”
Aguayo and Lopez heard them, smiled, acknowledged infrequent familiar faces among the Travers Day revelers.
The day started early and wouldn’t end until late. Fierceness’ road from the Jim Dandy to the Travers included gallops and breezes of course, but the list of chores for even a single horse would stretch Siri to the limit. A Pletcher staffer brushed, bandaged, bathed and walked Fierceness. Somebody hung a hay net, mucked a stall, picked hooves, brushed out his tail, braided his forelock, held him for the blacksmith, cleaned his halter, turned on (and off) his fan, fluffed his bedding, filled his feed tub and water bucket, cleaned that bucket and feed tub, made sure he was safe at night and on and on and on.
“Team Pletcher,” Lopez said, about being one of the people who make it happen. “It’s a lot of work, yes, a lot of work. He makes me very proud.”
Fierceness made the team work a little extra after rearing up – and standing on his hind legs – in the saddling stall before the Jim Dandy. Nobody wanted that to become a habit, so twice during race days at Saratoga, Fierceness went through the full routine. He wore a bridle from the barn, walked to the holding barn, came through the backyard crowd with the horses for a race, got saddled by a valet, walked the paddock (that was him in a backward 7 number cloth Aug. 15 and again Aug. 22), then got untacked and went home.
“I just got the feeling maybe he knew the difference between a morning paddock schooling and an afternoon paddock schooling,” Pletcher said. “We thought we might mix it up a little bit and trick him a little bit. We went through the whole pre-race protocol. We wanted to race-simulate. Byron and Juan were involved in all that too.”
It paid off. On Travers Day, Saratoga’s most chaotic atmosphere, Fierceness was calmness. Lopez held the chain shank, which went over Fierceness’ nose and snapped to the D-bit on the other side. Aguayo handled the off side with an all-leather shank snapped to the bit as well.
“Paddock school, paddock school, paddock school,” said Aguayo of the change in behavior. “That’s why we did it. We don’t want that to happen anymore. It was very, very stressful (before the Jim Dandy). He was a good boy today; he did what he was supposed to do and we were all OK with that.”
Out the gap beyond the quarter pole, a dozen or so peers waited for Aguayo and Lopez on the horse path next to Union Avenue with another round of well wishes – in Spanish this time. The men bantered back, smiled, patted their horse on the neck and turned right toward the test barn – happy, proud, as responsible for the Travers winner as anyone else.
“Those guys are the heart and soul of the operation, they do a lot of work,” Pletcher said. “Byron has been with us 25 years I think and Juan the same. When you see the enjoyment they have and the emotion that they have after a win like that it’s special. You see the owner, you see everyone here afterward. Those guys do the work.”
