“Creek” Runs In “Gulch”

Despite protests of several horsemen based at Dunkrye Formi Downs just outside of Santiago del Estero, Saturday’s Gulch Bro Challenge for older mares was redrawn after the original carding of the race omitted five-year-old, and now likely favorite, Cormorant Creek.

Racing officials at the recently constructed facility representing Argentina’s lone recognized race meet were conflicted in their accounts of the mistake. Racing Secretary Juan Everlandez insisted it was just a simple oversight.

“The card was in the printer; the stupid computer just took so long to print the entry that everyone forgot to grab the card and get it into the stack.”

Another official, wishing to remain anonymous, remembered to grab the card, but implies that it sat in the printer for minutes rather than hours.

“This guy Lee Snyder or whatever; my God make up your mind. Are you coming? We can make a race card without sitting around wondering if the big mare is going to make it or not. I called him at nine (the morning of entries) and asked him if he’s going to enter and he’s not sure. I told these guys here at ten when we needed a couple of more for the race that she isn’t in there.”

“At eleven, we’re drawing the race and he’s on the phone making sure that his mare was entered.”

“If Juan (Everlandez) wants to play along and say he took the entry and forgot about it, that’s his business.”

Local trainers and owners expressed dismay at what was perceived as the racing office’s intent to hand their purse fund out to ‘foreign interests’. Dan Dalvador viewed the conduct as “borderline treason.”

“We spent six generations of hard work, focus, and resolve developing our lobbying interests and saving enough money to address government officials respectfully in the hopes of gaining approval for Video Lottery Terminals.”

“In two years, Rio De La Plata Pacers will become the second gaming facility, offering standardbred racing as evening entertainment.”

“When we take the rent money from hard working citizens of Argentina bamboozled by bright lights and shiny things, we certainly don’t want it going to some fancy United States, east coast horse.”

Carefully avoiding the spotlight of the controversy, Lee Snyder, trainer of Cormorant Creek for owner Dos Stables LLC, remained quiet on the matter until hearing the last comment.

“Real fancy, this mare. I ran her for maiden claim $4,000 in Puerto Rico the first time. We got real big time when we got trounced in an allowance in her second race so we went to Chicago to run for $30,000 claim. They were so scary terrified of this mare coming to their track that she was 38-1. This was a bunch of pokey mid-level claimers.”

“There must be American business behind this track. (Slot) machines built it and support it. They have no incentive to encourage a nice mare like mine to come to this new place and bring some press, I guess. At the end, the success of a meet or a day won’t be based upon the enthusiasm of racing fans for a superior product, but rather, a final analysis of a ‘per machine revenue’ report. Sooner or later every soccer field in Argentina has a box full of these machines, nobody bothers to go all the way to the stuffy track with the high concession prices. Then there’s no machines at the track. Then there’s no track.”

For the record, Cormorant Creek did break her maiden on grass in her debut, the aforementioned $4,000 claimer. She did get beat in her second start, an allowance race on grass, but when she did go off at 38-1 in Chicago for a $30,000 tag, on dirt for the first time, she absolutely toyed with them. And, she started to get real good.

A gray daughter of Strodes Creek, Cormorant Creek made the ascent to stardom that stories are written about. But forget all that relevant stuff that actually pertains to the horse and would have made a much more compelling, factual, albeit biographical bit of off-the-cuff literature. We’re sticking with tales of racing office scandals in Argentina and low-grade stabs at ‘slot mania’. We take on steroids, slaughter, and Stronach in week 3553.

Mr. Snyder’s then four-year-old made winning on the main track a regular occurrence after debuting on the surface in the $30,000 claimer. Wins in consecutive allowance races, exiting both the ‘other than’ and ‘two other than’ conditions, spawned the logical transition to a minor stakes debut. Despite a string of three straight wins in tow, Cormorant Creek went to post June 9, 2007 for the Happy Project Stakes in Rhode Island as a 15-1 outsider in a field of nine.

Confidently handled throughout by rider Dean Tyrrell, Cormorant Creek rallied from mid-pack to win convincingly.

That effort, coupled with the ease and professionalism of the win itself, prompted an ambitious attack on the Grade II Delta Tau Chi Sprint at seven furlongs. Facing a full gate of fourteen, despite four straight now in tow, including a handy win in her stakes debut, Cormorant Creek went to the gate at 19-1.

Head and head for last for most of the race, nearly ten behind, the eye-catching gray split a quarter-mile’s worth of rivals before getting a clear path with 100 yards to the wire and nailed Mrs. Stark Reality, earner of over $300,000, at the wire. In fact, she outran a solid cast, including Lucky’s Brook Lynne, a graded stakes winning earner of nearly $600,000 and Calculus Guru, a graded winner of over $849,000.

Predictably, it was on to New York for the Grade I Dancer Cap, where again, Cormorant Creek was overlooked as a viable competitor, heading away from the gate at 21-1. Why such a big price again on this mare? Among her rivals that day: Thnxmsslew, a Grade I winner at ages two and three, and earner of over $1,487,000 – she ran ninth. Koko Taylor, a rival on Saturday, has made almost a half million – she ran eighth. Explosive Storm was there to defend her title. The winner of the 2006 edition of the race had won six stakes races, including three Grade II races since her victory a year earlier. She finished sixth, but ran just nine more times, winning one minor allowance before being retired with over $1,200,000 bankrolled and bred to Pulpit.

Multiple graded stakes winner and earner of nearly $700,000, Stirling Form, did not win. Nor did $644,000 earner Again With the Gold, nor Suffragette City, winner of well over a half million. Burning Voyage ran last and she’s a stakes winning earner of over $439,000.

So it was Cormorant Creek that settled early, far behind in tenth, and began to contend with five-sixteenths to the wire. Again slicing and dicing through the maze of rivals past the eighth pole, it was Cormorant Creek that found running room once again in the final strides and with a rush, couldn’t get to the wire soon enough. Defeated for the first time in six starts, it was Fleetwood Mia, who had won nine races, including four minor stakes and the Grade III Flurry, as well as a second in the Grade I Exam Stakes just before the Dancer, that held on late to prevail.

Still, from a debut in the bottom of the maiden ranks, through the allowance conditions, onto the minor stakes wins and a grade II win, the stoic, ‘good enough to win’ effort to be second in a Grade I was a tremendous closing chapter to a storybook career. Unfortunately, that may have been the case too literally.

Since the crushing defeat in New York, Cormorant Creek has lost five straight. Granted, she has run second three times, all in minor stakes. However, efforts in the Grade III Blueberry and the Grade III Vermont Is 4 Lovers, eighth and twelfth, respectively, can be described only as dreadful.

Did the story end the day the dream died twenty yards too soon? Can she round back into form? Why is Lee Snyder so reluctant to enter punctually? Is Pon-Ki really the mother of Curt Shinkle?

The gray mare lands in the right race to gauge her current status as a win could in no way be belittled as a ‘minor’ win or a ‘handpicked’ victory. Standing firmly in her path is Desert Bagman, a daughter of Miesque’s Son with seventeen exacta finishes from twenty-three career starts.

With over $200,000 in career earnings, Desert Bagman has won five of her last seven, with a second, and a third, epitomizing the word ‘consistent’. Having run twenty-three times, never twice consecutively at the same track, the brown mare has finished worse than third just five times, with the average margin of defeat in those five poor finishes just a half dozen lengths.

Desert Bagman has good early speed in a race that isn’t overwrought with pace and though she tends to live in the allowance ranks, she has been equally capable stepping up into minor stakes engagements. She’ll need to fend off some early pressure from the local hopeful, Gold Ambition, but barring a career best performance from that rival, Desert Bagman is likely to be a handy leader heading past the quarter-pole.

The local hero, Gold Ambition has made fifteen starts since January 27, 2007. Fourteen of those starts are right here at Dunkrye Formi Downs, nine of them wins. A daughter of Storm Cat out of the Seeking the Gold mare Gold Saturn, Gold Ambition is a half-sister to Gold Jet, a retired winner of nineteen races and multiple stakes as well as over $350,000 in earnings. She is also a full sister to Gold Squall, winner of twenty-four from fifty-four starts, over $1,200,000, and fifteen stakes wins, including two graded stakes. Gold Passport, also a full sibling, like Gold Squall, has made a career relishing the turf sprint division. Though not as accomplished as his older siblings, Gold Passport has assembled an excellent resume of twelve wins, twenty-two exacta finishes, in thirty-four starts and earnings over one-third of a million dollars.

With remarkable consistency, good speed, a flair for the course, the only thing Gold Ambition is lacking is her regular pilot, a fact not lost on trainer Paseana Neintoo.

“Fifteen races, fourteen of them right here, and fourteen times Elbert (Seifert) has been on this filly. Nothing against Noel (Kirk), but some guy rolls in and tells Elbert’s agent that his filly won this and that and next thing I know, I’m sold out for what?”