A few days before he ran Wise Dan in the Firecracker Handicap, Charlie LoPresti showed up at his Rice Road barn at Keeneland with a scale and a task in mind. He was dealing with the tough impost of 128 pounds the Horse of the Year was assigned and wanted to know what the difference between race day and every day would be in the 1-mile turf test.
When training was complete he summoned Damien Rock and told him to grab his tack and hop on the scale. Rock’s an ex-jockey, Wise Dan’s regular rider and an avid runner and cyclist and says he weighs 122 pounds. Clothes, boots, helmet, tack, gel saddle pads, everything else brought it to 152. Not bad, 24 pounds more than he carried to victory in the Firecracker and 23 more than he’ll shoulder against six opponents in today’s $500,000 Fourstardave Handicap.
The weight issue is as unavoidable these days as talk of the 150th anniversary of racing at Saratoga was before the meet opened. It doesn’t seem to be as big a deal now as it was before the Firecracker, when LoPresti voiced his displeasure with the spread that ranged from 11 to 15 pounds.
Wise Dan will give between 11 and 14 pounds to the Fourstardave field, all graded stakes winners. He’s a deserving 3-5 favorite, riding a seven-race win streak with a target on his back and probably not headed to any handicaps anytime soon.
“I never gave much thought to this whole handicap thing,” LoPresti said Friday morning in the shedrow of his barn, Whitney runner-up Successful Dan an arm’s length away on the vibration plate. “Then at Keeneland somebody said to me, ‘Well, I’m waiting for the weights to come out and we’ll see if we’re going to run against Wise Dan.’ And it never registered.
“It was never my intention to run in the Firecracker. I thought he’d get maybe 126, 127, add a pound from the Woodford. When the weights came out and I saw the spreads I was kind of angry. Not at Ben [Huffman, Churchill’s racing secretary], just the whole situation. I told him, ‘If you do this to him now it’s going to set a precedent for the rest of the year. And this is not a good race and you’re going to make him do this in this kind of race? It doesn’t make any sense at all.'”
Handicaps largely fell out of favor in recent years for myriad reasons. Some tracks abandoned them altogether, changing prestigious races to allowance conditions, while others deferred to the traditions laid down at the country’s showcase tracks and meetings and continue run them. Saratoga still runs handicaps, maybe not as many as before, but races like the Whitney, Vanderbilt, Honorable Miss, Bernard Baruch and Fourstardave are even if the Diana, Ballerina, Sword Dancer and Personal Handicap are not.
LoPresti knew what was coming when he got to Saratoga. He knew Wise Dan would pick up weight, but hoped the NYRA racing office might take weight off some of his opponents so the defending Fourstardave winner wouldn’t be in the 130-plus range and inching closer to poundage he totes in the morning. Not that Rock slows him down, as evidenced by a 5-furlong breeze on the turf course at the Oklahoma Training Track in :57.38 two weeks ago.
“I talked to them up here after the horse won, I told them I wanted to bring him, but I wanted to be sure that they’re not going to slap 130, 132 pounds on him,” LoPresti said. “And they assured me that they wouldn’t. P.J. (Campo) has been really fair. I want everybody to know that. He came to me and said, ‘What are you thinking?’ I told him what I was thinking and he said ‘We’re right on the same page, you won’t carry no more than 129 and maybe 128.’
“After they got to looking at it, he thought after what they did to him in Kentucky that he had to give him another pound. They didn’t have to do that to him down there. That’s what I was trying to tell Ben, and then Ben says ‘A lot of racing secretaries said he should carry 130.’ I said, ‘Come on. In a Grade 2 for $150,000? The horse has run in every race at Churchill for you guys, we paraded him after the Breeders’ Cup and you’re going to do that to the horse?’ Anyway, it’s over and done and Ben’s a good friend of mine, but I always felt like it was going to set a precedent. Had I thought more about this I probably wouldn’t have run him in the Firecracker.”
“I’m not beating everybody up. P.J. was up against it. He came here the other day and told me. He said, ‘After I looked at the Firecracker I would have looked stupid if I gave him less weight.’ And everybody’s hollering. If you want to beat him, beat him. Don’t try to persuade the racing secretary to put more weight on him. That’s what they do, ‘If you don’t put this weight on him we won’t run.’ That’s what they did to him in the Firecracker. I’m sure their race wasn’t going to go, but why should my horse get penalized because they can’t get the race to go?”
LoPresti said he might have considered the Grade 2 King Edward Stakes at Woodbine, where Wise Dan won the Woodbine Mile last year during his championship campaign and after the Fourstardave, instead of the Firecracker mainly because it’s not a handicap. He says he’d consider it again next year, “if he’s here and everything’s good.”
But for now Wise Dan is here and LoPresti is excited to run. The 6-year-old Wiseman’s Ferry gelding hasn’t lost since finishing a troubled second in the Grade 1 Stephen Foster on dirt last June at Churchill. He’s won seven in a row since then, all graded stakes, including the Breeders’ Cup Mile to clinch Horse of the Year, champion older male, and champion turf male honors. Two of his wins this year are Grade 1, the Maker’s 46 Mile at Keeneland and the Turf Classic on the Kentucky Derby undercard at Churchill.
Outside of Kentucky Derby winner Orb and Belmont and Jim Dandy winner Palace Malice, Wise Dan is the biggest name on the grounds. Powerful, athletic and fast, he’s got all the tools. He’ll be doubly, maybe triply, tough because, like other members of LoPresti’s small string on the Saratoga backstretch, he’s training well since he got here a few days before the meet opened.
LoPresti has won a graded stakes in each of the three years he’s shipped horses here from his year-round base at Keeneland-Here Comes Ben in the 2010 Forego, Turallure in the 2011 Bernard Baruch and Wise Dan in last year’s Fourstardave.
“I like it here, they’ve been good to me here and I’ve had some luck here,” LoPresti said. “My very first horse I brought up here won a Grade 1, Here Comes Ben. I’m happy to be here. The horse is not going to disappoint me. I hope he doesn’t disappoint the fans. I’m sure they all want him to win. I want him to win. He’s really good right now and he’s going to run his race. If something unforeseen doesn’t happen, traffic trouble or you don’t know, but for me to sit here and say they’re not going to beat here is the wrong thing to say.
“I’ve been around this game a long time and this is the graveyard of champions. They beat Secretariat here. I’m not too worried about it. A lot of people say there’s a lot of pressure. There’s really no pressure on me. The horse has accomplished a lot. I’ll probably never have a horse like that again in my lifetime. It’s just been a wonderful ride. The most important thing for me is he runs good, comes back good and he doesn’t get hurt. Then I’m OK with whatever happens.”
How the race will be run could be interesting. Wise Dan drew the rail, the same spot he started from in the Firecracker on a rain-soaked turf course at Churchill. The probable speed in the race is King Kreesa, a New York-bred who won the Grade 3 Poker last time out at Belmont who drew post 6. Skyring, the Grade 2 Dixie winner last time for D. Wayne Lukas on the Preakness undercard, is right alongside Wise Dan and figures to show early speed.
The riders at Churchill did their best to try and knock off Wise Dan in the Firecracker, keeping the big chestnut bottled up on the inside. Wise Dan was so far to the inside that he brushed the inside hedge at one point in the stretch, but was too much for his four opponents that day. Lea, runner-up in that race while in receipt of 11 pounds, gets one more today for trainer Al Stall Jr. and leading jockey Joel Rosario.
Wise Dan usually rates in midpack then attacks when asked. He’ll go inside or outside, whatever. He’s even won on the lead gate-to-wire, although that was a ways back when he blitzed the field in the Grade 3 Ben Ali in track-record time during the 2012 Keeneland spring meet. The Ben Ali was the second time John Velazquez rode Wise Dan and he’ll be back aboard today.
“Johnny was here yesterday and said maybe we should just go early and let them catch us, so I don’t know,” LoPresti said, maybe half-joking. “I really don’t know what’s going to transpire. I know he likes the soft turf. Last year I had a big question in my mind. I’m going to leave it in Johnny’s hands. He knows the horse. I just tell him to get a good trip, safe trip and try to win it.”
