Awesome Force favored in Travelers
August in New York means one thing for horse-racing fans: it’s Travelers Stakes time. The storied 10f race for 3yos is a highlight of any trainer’s career. Winning this race can be an important factor in end of the year honors, and who wouldn’t want to win such a prestigious million-dollar Grade 1 event? Because the Travelers is so special, it traditionally draws a great group of horses. This year is no different. Both of winners of the three Triple Jewel races have shown up, as have several horses hitting their best strides over the summer. This is truly an outstanding field of colts.
The heavy favorite at 4-1 is Camry’s Awesome Force. The Awesome Again colt has been the model of consistency for a year now, winning 9 of 15 lifetime starts. Among those wins are the G1 Movieland Futurity, G1 Middle Jewel, G1 New Yorker, and G1 Swamps. He holds stakes records at 8.5f and 12f, making him a versatile threat indeed. 10f may be a bit of a question mark, however. In his only 10f start, the Bluegrass Derby, Awesome Force was inexplicably nowhere to be found at the finish. If you overlook that race, it’s easy to love this colt here. The biggest strike against him is his running style. AF tends to run from way back; no closer has ever won the Travelers. If AF can do it, it’ll be a performance for the record books.
Palmisland’s Ataun is also getting some serious betting respect at 6-1. He’s one-for-one at 10f with a narrow win in the Bluegrass Derby. Winless in three starts since, but the Gone West colt still has been good enough for a pair of seconds and a third in those three. He should love getting back to 10f, and he has a nice steady mid-closing style that should suit him well here. With just two off-the-board finishes in 14 lifetime starts, this is the kind of horse we all would love to have. He’s steady, reliable, and he looks like he’s sitting on a huge race.
After Awesome Force and Ataun, the oddsmaker set a muddle of a line. Thus we have six horses all at 9-1:
Star Spangled Kid earned his way into the Travelers off the strength of very good wins in the G2 Clerk Of Scales and G3 Fabulous Fab Stakes. Kyclocker6’s Smarty Jones colt has been a solid racehorse with four wins from 11 starts to his credit. He tried 10f just once, in the G1 Princess Cup two back, but settled for fourth after being shuffled back early. This colt really prefers to stay closer to the pace, which is just what he’ll have to do to win this race. He’s run >100SPs just twice, with a high of 105, but that should be sufficient to win here. Hasn’t yet shown he’s among the best of his class, but he’s moving on up very well.
A Vow To Be A Slew has spent half of his 12-race career in residency-restricted company, amassing over $800k along the way. Willyam37’s Broken Vow colt looks on the verge of the big time, based on his last there starts. Three SPs over 100, and 2 wins at 10f are both very good signs that AVTBAS is on the way up. He’s not a stranger to graded company (he started in the G2 Fountain Of Ute), and even in restricted races he’s been facing some very good horses. Indeed, he beat Passing Stone in the Smackdown last time out to earn a 106SP. AVTBAS should handle the higher class easily, and clearly relishes the distance. As he’s a closer, however, one wonder how he’ll take to this particular race.
Sender3 enters Ghost Warden, a Rainbow Quest colt with a perfect dirt record. Given the pedigree and solid turf performance of GW, the owner can be forgiven for waiting so very long to get his colt on the main track. When he finally did, however, the colt showed off with an allowance win and a new personal high SP of 103. That win was encouraging enough to merit a try in the G2 Shiny Gem last time out. Ghost Warden promptly reeled off a 112 SP to win by almost three lengths. He likes the track, he’s got a great SP on his record, and you’ve got to expect he’ll take to the highest class very well. But will he bounce off that huge record-setting Shiny Gem, and can his come-from-behind style work here?
Peppet’s career has been all over the board. The Vindication colt has 14 starts on his record, 9 of those on grass and three on off-tracks. he’s a stakes winner on firm turf, fast dirt, and good dirt. Financr has entered his colt at 10f just once, and that on turf, but he did get the win by three lengths. On the plus side is Peppet’s tendency to win when he goes from turf to dirt. He’s also got a pair of 100+ SPs, both earned at 9.5 on dirt. He does have a mid-closing style that should work for this race, but the colt has a better record on a wet track than a dry one.
Passing Stone won five straight before running second by a slim head in the Bluegrass Derby. He hasn’t found his way back to the winner’s circle yet, but he’s got the kind of speed that suits this race to a tee. The Jimcougar trainee nearly stole the Smackdown 10f race last time out with a front-running effort, but gave way to fellow GR Simsters representative A Vow To Be A Slew in the stretch. Given how well speedsters do in the Travelers, you have to really like Passing Stone even though he’s yet to win at 10f.
Right next to Passing Stone in the starting gate will be Apache Sunrise. Since he’s a speedball just like Passing Stone, it’ll be fun to watch the duel for the lead. An injury in January sidelined the Harlan’s Holiday colt for three months, but since his return he’s been very good. A second in the G1 Princess Cup at 10f told the world that Poorman’s colt was back in business. A wire-to-wire win in the G1 Smackdown Mile vaulted Sunrise to the top of his class. The 109SP he earned is among the highest of his age group. Sunrise is capable of winning off the lead, but he has to stay very close to it in order to have a chance.
Laxe’s colt Borzakovski has just one win in 2007, but that win was a really nice 3+ length score at 11f in the G1 Monster Mash in May. The son of The Cliff’s Edge has never gone 10f, yet there’s a real possibility he’ll handle it well based on that 11f score and his multiple graded placings in the 8-9f range. For Borzakovski, the big problem is speed. His top SP is 100, and while that’s not that far from the best of this field, he would be in a better position with more triple-digit numbers behind him. he generally likes to hang out four to six lengths from the lead, which will put him in good position for a stretch run. Too slow to support him as a winner, but could sneak up for a placing. 12-1.
In at 13-1 is A.P. Gangster. Runabout’s A.P. Valentine colt earned a shot at the Travelers with a 4+ length win in a listed stake last month. The 110SP was superb, but represented a huge jump for a colt making his stakes debut. Gangster is very lightly raced with just seven starts under him, but if that 110 is the real deal, we’ll be hearing more about him in the near future. Moving to a G1 so soon is a bold move, but the trainer is known for making those bold moves work. The colt generally comes from well off the pace, which doesn’t usually work well in this race.
Spookshow, entered at 18-1, is still on the hunt for his breakthrough win. Jonsnow2’s Kingmambo colt won his only 10f start (an allowance) and looked very impressive in placing third at 9.5 in the G2 Clerk Of Scales last time out. He’s got a strong closing kick but hasn’t yet been able to couple that with the speed necessary to break the 100SP barrier. Still, after popping two 99s in a row, and getting back up to 10f in this race, he’s probably due for a big performance.
Awesome Force has a buddy in this race in Ok Go, 21-1 on the morning line. Trained out of the wbrv stable, the colts share common ownership. Ok Go was an NWRC prize baby that didn’t look so hot in his first few races, but he’s shaping into a solid runner. Sired by Dehere, the colt has just two wins from 9 starts. He likes to get out in front, but he’s not fast enough to hold the lead against the field. he will, however, help ensure an honest pace for Awesome Force to mow down in the stretch. He looks to be at his best around a mile, but as this will be his first go at longer than 9f, and his first graded try (and second stakes attempt), he faces a big challenge.
Hope For The Ark starts at 25-1 from the far outside post. Antagonist’s Pine Bluff colt started his career on the turf but after finding no success in four starts went to the main track. It took two dirt races to break his maiden, but since then he’s been posting 90s SPs and has won twice more in allowance company. He’s never gone in a stake, and his longest race to date was at 9.5f. Hope enjoys a fast break, but has trouble maintaining the lead down the stretch. The extra ground might help him slow down and conserve some energy, but when this foes are a good 10 points faster than Hope, you know he’s going to have trouble. The added distance is a good idea for the colt, as is a but of a test in stakes company, but this seems to represent too much to ask the colt to do at once.
The final entrant is Lenny13’s Kinison, breaking from the rail at 27-1. The Empire Maker colt debuted on dirt, then switched to the grass where he broke his maiden and earned a second win. When he switched back to the main track in April, however, the trainer knew his colt could be something good. A 2 1/2 length win for a 96SP will boost any trainer’s confidence. In three starts since, he’s won twice more with the only loss on a wet track. Kinison has the kind of fleetness that lets him get away to a 12+ length lead, as he had at one point two races back going 10f. He won’t get such as easy unchallenged time of it here, but he just might have a surprise in store. There are two main concerns: this is his first stake, and he simply hasn’t been challenged on the dirt, so we don’t yet know what he’s capable of. As Passing Stone shares ownership with Kinison, it’ll be interesting to see how Lenny’s fast horses run against each other.
When we look at past winners of the Travelers, we see some interesting similarities with this year’s field. In 2006, New Found Cyclone captured both the Travelers and the Middle Jewel. Macho Niner took home the New Yorker in 2005, and earned a Travelers win of his own that year. Will Awesome Force follow in the hoofsteps of those horses? Or will he instead emulate Tuff Enuff, winner of the 2004 Middle Jewel and New Yorker, but runnerup in the Travelers as Granhee set the stakes record. Ermington Pegusus was runnerup in both the Bluegrass Derby and Travelers in 2006 – what does this mean for Passing Stone? We had no Triple Jewel sweep this year, but perhaps some colt will be inspired by I Seek U’s 2003 campaign in which he won the Travelers in wire to wire fashion by almost four lengths. In 2002 Tower Storm won the Bluegrass, finished second in The Middle Jewel, then settled for second in the Travelers. Will Ataun duplicate that, or can he get the big win this weekend? But what about the lesser-known entrants? Pleasant Nijinsky had never won a G1 (or any grade for that matter) until the 2001 Travelers, which he won by over 6 lengths. Oliver Plus Pit also made the most of the summer classic to notch his first G1 with the 1999 Travelers. Or perhaps one of the colts who finally broke into the bigtime during late spring and summer will pull an Enough Come (the colt took home both the Swamps and the Eddie Haskell before his 2000 Travelers victory).
Perhaps the running styles of the past winners can shed light on who might be our Travelers victor of 2007. Fully half of the eight Travelers winners have won from the lead. None have ever come from the back of the pack. Great news for Passing Stone, Apache Sunrise, Kinison and Star Spangled Kid, but not so good for A Vow To Be A Slew, Awesome Force, Ghost Warden, and Ataun.
Maybe odds will shed light on the field. The winner with the longest odds was Enough Come. At 10-1, he wasn’t exactly a longshot. Most of the winners went off at around 7-1 or 8-1. If you go by history, cross Kinison, Borzakovsky, Ok Go, Spookshow, A.P. Gangster, and Hope for the Ark off your list, as their odds are just too long.
So what makes for an ideal Travelers winner? Based on history, the horse should have run at least second in (and preferably won) at least one Triple Jewel race. He should be at 10-1 or less (preferably under 8-1). He should be a horse that likes to be in front or very near the pace. The horses that best fit those criteria in this edition of the Travelers are Passing Stone and Apache Sunrise.