Saratoga 2015 Reflections

They say racing has its own form of luck and you need it to be on your side. This year Saratoga illustrated this exactly for us. It was a very long and tough meet. There are plenty of big operations that leave without winning a race at Saratoga and it’s probably my biggest professional fear every year to leave without winning a race up there. We did manage to win a race, but it seemed like every time we ran a live horse the fates conspired against us.  You don’t want to blame anyone other than yourself because you’re the trainer and at the end of the day you have to produce a horse that’s conditioned as best you possibly can, but I do feel we got a little unlucky a few times. Whether it was the weather, or an unlucky trip, or a bad ride.

I thought Noble Cornerstone had as good a chance as anybody ever had. And at 1:30 in the afternoon it rained like it only can in Saratoga. I’d never run him on a wet track before and I took a chance and ran him. He did as he always does, he tried his hardest, but he ran into a wet track specialist (Moonlight Song). Still, he gave it his best, getting beat by only three lengths and beaten by only a length to Palace (who is a Grade One winner). Noble Cornerstone came out of his races absolutely fine. We’re pointing him toward the Hudson which is a stakes race going seven eighths here at Belmont.  Later, I think it will be time to stretch him out a little. As a four-year-old he should be strong enough to go a mile and be effective against stakes horses.

For an example of unlucky trips, Amazing Anne got boxed in, through no fault of Junior Alvarado, who was in a perfect position but couldn’t get out. Then we took a chance and ran her in a stakes race against the boys and she was quite clearly the best horse in the race, but just couldn’t get out until too late.

In the last week of the meet Lead Singer was really one of my best chances. He was on the inner turf that favors speed horses like him. He really likes to feel his feet rattle on hard and fast grass. And three hours before the race the heavens opened. Luckily Lead Singer held on to win by the skin of his teeth, but he probably would have won by a length or two rather than by a head if the ground had been really fast. I think it rained for three days during the whole meet and two of them affected my horses. Lead Singer did get the job done, and it was great, not just for me but for the owners. Gregg and Cathy Paleski have been in the game for awhile and had never had a winner before. So for them to get their first winner at Saratoga was incredibly special for both them and me.  It was one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve had while involved in racing.

Slapstick is a two-year-old and a very talented horse. First time out he was taking on a horse of George Weavers, who had already run once and run quite well. And if Slapstick had changed leads he probably would have worn down George Weaver’s horse and won on his debut. Changing leads is something horses get wrong sometimes the first time out, but he had never done it wrong in training.  And of course the horse that beat him had to draw in off the AE list. And it goes on and on like that.

We had to send a few 2 year-olds back down to Belmont because they ended up injuring themselves at Saratoga, none badly. I certainly thought they were mature enough to continue on with their training, they had all previously worked 5 furlongs at Belmont. I learned that Saratoga can be very tough on two-year-olds. I had three colts and a filly and I had to stop on them, due to some juvenile niggles (baby aches and pains) that prevented them from getting to the races.

Due to the tough meet we had at Saratoga, I drove myself into a bit of a dark place and it began to affect everybody: the horses, the owners, and the staff. Mike Piazza pulled me aside one day and said “Hey you’re the guy that has to lead here. Put that smile back on your face. Be the guy who comes in and says ‘All right another day, let’s go!'” Mike Piazza is growing Zilla racing stables at a phenomenal rate, and I’m glad to be a part of that. It was something that needed to be said and it really struck home. It was a case of pick yourself up and everyone will come with you. And we did and at the end of the meet the horses were running extremely well.

Jim Hatchett (Oracle Bloodstock) was in Saratoga for two weeks of the sales, and has been a trainer for a very long time. He told me he’d been through plenty of times like this, and said, “Don’t worry, don’t change anything you’re doing. You finished last year as a 19% trainer.  You know what you’re doing, it’s just that the cards haven’t fallen your way.” And when we did finally win, Jim and Mike were among the first guys to send congratulatory text messages saying “We told you it would happen.”

This year I also learned a little bit more about what Saratoga is all about. The first year we went up with six horses and won a race, last year we went up with 14 horses and won three races. This year we took more horses and won less races. I learned that you can do everything in your power to win up there but it’s no God-given right that you will. Any race that you run up there is as keenly contested as any race in North America. Every single race matters, but it kind of matters more up there, because the spotlight is on. It really opened my eyes to what it means to win up there and how difficult it is. We probably got a little lucky last year, and this year we got a little unlucky. But that’s the way it goes in racing, you need everything to fall right.

– Tom Morley