Many moons have passed since Wise Dan first appeared on a national stage as a lightly raced 3-year-old making his fifth start in the 2010 Breeders’ Cup Sprint on a sunny and seasonal afternoon at Churchill Downs.
Wise Dan finished sixth that day, beaten only 2 1/2 lengths by eventual champion Big Drama. It was a good effort considering that eight months earlier Wise Dan could finish no better than fifth in a maiden race in the dead of winter at Turfway Park.
Most know the story of Wise Dan since. The subsequent spring was somewhat rocky and then trainer Charlie LoPresti moved him to the turf. The Wiseman’s Ferry gelding immediately sent out a “watch out” signal in his first grass start, a victory in the Grade 2 Firecracker Handicap at Churchill that would be followed by 13 stakes victories over the next three seasons. Nine of those wins came on turf, three on synthetic and one on dirt.
The surfaces changed occasionally. The riders changed a few times, too, although John Velazquez, who will be aboard again Saturday when Wise Dan goes for a second straight win in the Breeders’ Cup Mile, handled most of the assignments. Wise Dan didn’t change much though and continued to delivere a top effort just about every time LoPresti tacked him up.
Morning or afternoon, it doesn’t matter, Wise Dan brings it and brings it with authority.
He’s still tough. He still burns the chiseled arms of his exercise rider, accomplished triathlete and former jock Damien Rock, when he drags him around the track in the morning. He’s still fast, versatile, ratable, quick.
He’s still Wise Dan. And he’s still the horse to beat, even after a loss to Silver Max on the Polytrack at Keeneland in the rained-off Shadwell Mile last time.
“He is a tough horse,” LoPresti said last week, allowing himself a little time to look ahead and look back while he trained at set from his Rice Road barn at Keeneland. “Sometimes you wonder when it’s all going to end, when he starts going the other way or when he starts tailing off. That was a little bit in the back of my mind the other day, that maybe we went to the well a few too many times this year, and then he comes back to the way he is and I think he’s pretty good right now.
“I feel like I’m going into it just like I did last year, the way he’s acting. He got beat the other day, yes. That loss kind of reminded me of the Stephen Foster. The way ran, and if you watched him run in the Stephen Foster, he was not really handling the track that night and everything went against him. I feel like he’s going to run good.”
The 2012 Stephen Foster, where Wise Dan finished second by a head to Ron the Greek after a rough trip, ended a three-race win streak and came before a string of nine straight wins.
The streak came to an end in the Shadwell earlier this month at Keeneland, a race transferred from the turf to the Polytrack and run at 1 1/16 miles. Wise Dan finished second that day, unable to catch the loose-on-the-lead Silver Max.
So now Wise Dan heads to the Breeders’ Cup off a loss. That’s something he didn’t do during that first tilt on the big stage – he won the Grade 3 Phoenix back in 2010 – and it’s something he didn’t do last year when he defeated Animal Kingdom and clinched Horse of the Year and champion older male and turf male honors.
“I’m really excited about our chances,” said LoPresti, who was scheduled to arrive in Southern California Tuesday afternoon and just ahead of Wise Dan. “I’m not going to lie to you, I didn’t want to get him beat. It kind of hurt me … just to have the horse get beat. I wanted to keep him undefeated. That was a big thing for me this year, to keep him undefeated. Hopefully we get to the Breeders’ Cup and he runs the same race back and he wins. Then I think I’ll be really happy and proud of my horse.”
Win or lose LoPresti will be proud. He readily admits Wise Dans don’t come around every day and knows he’s a once-in-a-lifetime animal.
Standing outside his barn at Saratoga Race Course on a steamy mid-July morning, a few days before the meet opened and just hours after his small string arrived from Kentucky, LoPresti talked about how special Wise Dan was to him, “even if he never wins another race.”
“I know how lucky I am to have a horse like this. People work their whole lives for one like this.”
Not surprisingly, the tune was the same three months later.
The Breeders’ Cup oddsmaker is an admirer, too, and pegged Wise Dan as the shortest-priced favorite of any of the 14 World Championship events Friday and Saturday at Santa Anita Park. He’s even-money on the line against nine others in the Mile, with European import Olympic Glory next at 4-1 and old friend Silver Max at 5-1. The next heaviest morning-line favorite for the 14 races is Game On Dude, Wise Dan’s most likely adversary for Horse of the Year honors heading into the weekend, at 8-5 for the Classic.
Wise Dan breezed a half mile in :47.40 at Keeneland Oct. 17, his first work since the Shadwell and first since five days before a record-setting win in the Woodbine Mile Sept. 15 at Woodbine.
LoPresti admits he might have been a little light on Wise Dan in between the Woodbine Mile and the Shadwell, but was pleased with what the gelding got out of the Keeneland race and subsequent breeze. He originally intended to breeze Wise Dan a day earlier on the turf, but wet weather in the Bluegrass region most of the month pushed it back a day and onto the Polytrack.
“That work was in hand the whole way, he drug Damien around there,” LoPresti said. “Damien never asked him for anything, actually he was talking him out of it the whole way.
“And you saw what I did at Saratoga with him. I only worked him that one time on the grass and from then on in I just worked him on the dirt and I worked him easy. If I had to do it all over again, maybe I wasn’t as hard on him from the Woodbine race to this race. I thought that as well as he ran at Woodbine that he didn’t need much and I really trained him pretty lightly from the Woodbine race into the [Shadwell]. So maybe I kind of take some of the blame for that. And the track wasn’t to his liking at all with all that water on it and everything.”
Read about what Wise Dan was up to last winter.
Read what Charlie LoPresti said about Wise Dan before Saratoga.
Read about Wise Dan’s win in the 2013 Fourstardave at Saratoga.
Watch Wise Dan win the 2012 Breeders’ Cup Mile.
