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Joe Clancy 
Sue and George Sensor won the Grade 1 Colonial Cup, the biggest race of their lives as steeplechase owners, with Top Striker Saturday at Springdale Race Course in their hometown of Camden, S.C. Trained at Springdale by Arch Kingsley, Top Striker produced a win for the locals on a day that honored the memory of the ultimate local – former race chairman Austin Brown who died in May.
Kieran Norris is just happy to be in the championship conversation. Paddy Young can’t really believe he has a chance at another trophy. And Sean McDermott is fighting hard to not dwell on what might have been.
Overjoyed, amazed, thrilled, proud, chuffed and pretty much any other adjective you wanted to call up, Garrett O’Rourke basked in the magnificence that was Arrogate after Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, California.
Sure, Beholder and Songbird threw down like Ali-Frazier, but what else happened Friday at the Breeders’ Cup?
Stepping from the Santa Anita dirt toward the winner’s circle aboard Beholder after Friday’s Breeders’ Cup Distaff, Gary Stevens looked down at trainer Richard Mandella and spoke seven simple words.
“She gave me everything. Great training job.”
“You’ve never been here?”
It happened – oh, I don’t know – a half-dozen times this morning. And, no, I’ve never been to Santa Anita Park, host of the 2016 Breeders’ Cup World Championships, until today. What a place. It’s a classic American racetrack, one I’d somehow never been to in my 51 years on Earth.
If A. P. Indian bounced as often as people said he would, he’d be on the barn roof by now.
Green Lantern Stable’s 6-year-old gelding, fourth choice in this Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Santa Anita, has won all six starts this year – going from winning Monmouth Park’s Decathlon in May to five more stakes wins and the edge of a championship by November. He drew post five in a field of nine entered Monday, after putting the finishing touches on his training with a 5-furlong breeze in 1:00 2/5 at Maryland’s Fair Hill Training Center over the weekend.
One by one, the stablemates in her set step away from the rail and trot down the stretch. They roll into easy gallops and head off to do their work. Two hook up for a half-mile breeze, zipping past in a match race of their own. She just stands, tail backed up to the outside rail in the chute. She watches, sort of, and gives the impression of a police horse – standing guard while waiting for something to happen.
The early 1990s were heady times for American steeplechasing, and Dr. John K. Griggs was right in the middle of it with a chestnut flash named Warm Spell. The Kentucky-bred son of Northern Baby challenged the bigger names from the barns of Jonathan Sheppard, Janet Elliot, Bruce Miller and company – and frequently beat them.
Forget all that “little horse that could” stuff. Get Ready Set Goes can run, it doesn’t matter if she’s part of a one-horse stable, an Ohio-bred, a 4-year-old filly taking on her elders and a rare Kentucky-based steeplechaser. It also doesn’t matter that her owner is also her trainer, van driver, groom and hotwalker.
