“Rogue” Stablemates Tough From Front to Back

Slim post-time favorite Non Negative, a four-year-old by A. P. Indy, is the slightly more reliable version of Mambo Bones. A deep, deep closer, Non Negative has won ten of twenty-two, with an impressive nineteen top-three finishes.

However, the favorite’s consistency in big races is somewhat of a new trick for him, as he failed repeatedly in the graded stakes ranks as a juvenile. As a three-year-old, his brief, five-race campaign never saw graded competition, three times facing allowance foes, but led to a string of consistent, improving performances.

That good form carried over to this year and in fact, allowed him to return to the highest level of competition and this time, he was a force to deal with. With four wins, two seconds, and three third place finishes from nine starts in 2008, including wins in the Grade I New Hampshire and the Grade II Bertrando Handicap, Non Negative finds himself now ranked among the elite.

Out of the Gone West mare Opcon Only, Keeley Stables’ homebred is probably a deserving favorite in this race. Sure, he’s a deep closer, but he’s a pretty darn reliable deep closer in a race with plenty of speed.

The issue that may be difficult for him to overcome is the distance. Yes, he has won at a mile and a quarter, in fact, he has five very nice efforts from five tries at the distance. But strangely, it just seems like he might prove to be the best mile and a half Grade I dirt runner, but at a mile and a quarter, he’ll run well enough to compete with the best without being able to do his very best.

Is his best ten furlong race good enough for a win here? Probably, or maybe perhaps. The thing about Non Negative is that he’s almost certainly going to run well, no matter what. Will he be the best horse on any given day? This race has so much depth, that it seems almost certain that the favorite will hit the board, yet it seems almost equally certain that surely, someone will run a huge race, too much for Non Negative’s best ten furlong race to equal or exceed.

Horatio Nelson for some reason seems neither like a Grade I type horse nor a ten furlong type horse, yet there is something alluring about his running style in this spot. Much like the aforementioned Silvergore, the son of Touch Gold has just enough speed to make you pay for trying to coast on the lead or just enough speed to sit behind when the leaders sizzle, getting first run on the back markers.

He enters in fantastic form, with a second, a third, and a fourth place finish in his three most recent Grade I starts, as well as a recent win in the Grade III Star Athlete Handicap. Actually, he has always been in fantastic form, winning six of eighteen career starts with sixteen top three finishes and over $700,000 in winnings.

Out a stakes winning A. P. Indy mare named More Surpass, the four-year-old has two siblings, a retired five-year-old sister, Bullard Park, and six-year-old brother, I. B. Fast. I. B. Fast, still in training but off-form as a six-year-old, has made nearly a quarter-million, winning nine of forty-eight. Bullard Park herself was a stakes winning sprinter, earner of $340,000 while winning eleven of thirty-three starts.

I. B. Fast was essentially a sprinter. Bullard Park was nothing but a sprinter. Horatio Nelson is not a sprinter. But, he also does not seem to be a mile and a quarter model either.

Horatio Nelson has three wins at a mile and three-sixteenths, which almost defies sense as it seems as though his real trouble begins at ten furlongs. Other than his maiden win at nine furlongs, his two other wins came at a mile and a sixteenth, yet it is difficult to say with certainty that he is better going closer to a mile than he is at going at distances closer to a mile and a quarter. It almost seems as though ten furlongs is just too long and eight is just too short, but anywhere between is fair game.

I’m not exactly sold that the race is too far for him, but the form tries to convince me otherwise. Should he run well past the quarter-pole, in contention and fighting strong, only to back out in the last hundred or so yards, then I may consider myself sold and bagged.

Eight-year-old Manikato will make his presence felt in this race. His presence may be of little consequence leaving the far turn, but he still remains a crucial piece of this race.

With excellent early speed, a can-do attitude, and a stubborn need for the lead, the oldest participant in the race is the one that has to be overhauled.

Despite his advanced age, Manikato is a veteran of just sixteen races, twice retired after injury only to return with success. His sixteen starts have produced six wins, three seconds, and three third place finishes, good for purse earnings of nearly $200,000.

The son of Wild Again broke his maiden in his debut, a full field of two-year-olds going six furlongs, leading to a romping win in his second start, a geared-down, three and three-quarter length win in the Brent’s Danzig.

During a six week break after his second win in as many starts, there were reports that he had missed training. Speculation that he had been nursing sore shins flourished after lugging out badly while finishing seventh in the Grade I Vermont Thanks You, but those rumors dissipated when he bounced back in three weeks to fall just a quarter length short of victory in the Sleek Gold.

He remained in California after the Sleek Gold, supposedly preparing for a turf race in a few weeks. Manikato’s absence on the track in the morning, however, was noticed by several railbirds, buoyed by mention of a Gel-O-Cast on his right tendon while spotted walking at the barn. Manikato remained out of sight, returning to the work tab in March, almost five months after the Sleek Gold.

With just four mediocre works in tow, Manikato made his three-year-old debut as the 3-2 favorite in a six furlong allowance. Facing nine rivals and sporting black front bandages, the big grey led throughout, tiring in the final hundred yards to be second.

Forty-two days later, without a work since his comeback race, he was entered in Northern California for a claiming price of $50,000. Jockey Jim Joe Jacobson, fully aware that there were at least a dozen claims entered for the colt, was dissatisfied with how he warmed up in the post parade and he was duly scratched by the track vet.

It would be twenty months and a long recovery following stem-cell therapy on his torn right tendon before Manikato saw the starter again.

Manikato remained in California for nearly a year and a half off of the track, five months of it spent in an equine rehabilitation center, complete with hyperbaric chamber, aqua-treadmill, Euro-cisers, uphill gallops and double-wide stalls with turnout paddocks.

He returned to Northern California racing in an allowance off the long layoff and ran a bad eighth after showing minimal early speed. Naysayers remarked that his next stop was Las Alamitas.

To the contrary, his next stop was back to Southern California for a ten furlong allowance. Burdened with post fourteen, scoffed at because of an elliptical tendon, and dismissed at 17-1, Manikato busted them on the lead.

And then, again, he vanished.

Arthroscopic surgery to remove several small chips in his left ankle kept the hard-luck gamer sidelined for several months, but repeated setbacks delayed his return for fifteen months. Amazon Stables, searching for a solution, sent the colt to Kentucky to train over the new synthetic surface while preparing for another campaign with any luck.

In April of 2007, Manikato made yet another return to racing, contesting the lead in the nine furlong allowance and tiring to finish fifth. Though the synthetic track may have been fantastic to train on after a litany of lengthy injuries and recoveries, its biases and characteristics simply did not suit the running style that Manikato employed.

Returning in well under a year and a half for the first time in his last three appearances, the veteran slipped off to South Carolina where he got back in the groove, demolishing an allowance field on the lead over thirteen furlongs.

He has only run seven times since then and that was fifteen months ago, but in the meantime, he has actually put together two fairly lengthy campaigns of more than a race or two per twenty month period. In fact, with only one poor race really since the ankle surgery, his two best races have been this year. After a narrow loss in his first start after a couple months off going a mile, he returned in his most recent to crush seven others in the ten furlong Watson’s Metro Stakes.

He was probably never a Grade I horse, but he never ran long enough to ever reveal what the top line was, or is. This is a real tough spot for a broke down old jalopy that won half of his races over a half-decade ago. The saving grace is that he has won an equal number, the other half of his career total wins during this latest tour of duty as a senior citizen. And frankly, this is the time – he’s sound, fit, and in top form. He will attack the lead and if he makes it with relative ease, he may not particularly care about which colt half his age did what while he was off having his legs straightened and tightened.

MalachI Constant (note that my ‘puter refuses to allow a lowercase ‘I’ to end the first name), named for a character in Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s The Sirens of Titan, does not seem worthy of the bravado his owner displays when speaking of his prized steed.

Now hey, hey, hey, easy, oh yeah, he’ll spend the first half-mile annoying Non Negative and Mambo Bones, what with his trying hard to be last of the last early. And then he’ll start to pick it up when Non Negative picks it up and Mambo Bones gets moving, but in the end, he’ll settle for a minor check.

By Cozzene and out of an unraced Storm Cat mare, the five-year-old is in desperate need of a second win this year, his lone victory of 2008 in a conditioned allowance back in February as the 5-2 favorite. The problem is that unless he returns to allowance company, the condition class that has accounted for six of his seven career wins, he’s probably relegated to being remembered on the merits of who he ran with, rather than who he defeated.

The only other win, outside of his maiden victory and five allowance wins, is a Grade I win in the 2007 Bob Woodward in New York. Go figure.

He has routinely performed very well while facing the best the division offers, occasionally even putting a severe patter into the hearts of his rivals as he neared the wire. But here’s the deal – you can not leave him off of a ticket, unless you play pick sixes, pick fours, threes, maybe doubles… You get the drift.

Specimen X is not to be confused with Terminator X, the wax scratching icon of eighties rap music.

A striking chestnut owned by his breeder, Cobra Kai Racing, Specimen X is having a tough time finding his form as a five-year-old. He began his career late in his three-year-old season, eventually breaking his maiden in his four-year-old debut, his fifth start overall.

That win began a string of five wins, the next three accounting for a swift progression through his allowance conditions and ending with an upset win in the Pepi Dan, his stakes debut.

That streak ended in his next race and began a new streak of futility that lasted six races and eight months, ending with a methodical win over six foes and a muddy track in the Thunder Gleaming Stakes.

Here it is, eight months since the victory in the Thunder Gleaming and that remains his most recent win. Seven straight losses, the last three by more than thirty combined lengths.

The upside is that among the seven losses are several very good races, a factor worth considering since this period also marked the horse’s initial foray into graded stakes company.

I can’t lend much support to a horse with a maiden win, a few allowance wins, and a pair of minor stakes wins in the slop, a surface over which he is three for four, accounting for half of his wins. He loves the distance and that, along with a tactical running style and a flair for the occasional huge effort, gives him a chance for a piece.

There’s a big part of me that is rooting for Topicount Stables’ King of the Wind, a homebred son of Deputy Minister that is one strong performance from hitting the million dollar plateau in earnings. Never a major stakes force or even a subtle graded stakes hitter, the veteran has done it ‘the hard way.’

A nine-time winner from forty-six career starts, the six-year-old has strung together a pair of strong efforts leading to this race, deviating from a pattern of bad race after bad race for the first half of the year.

It seems rather easy to glance over his form and surmise that without his decent third last time in the mile and a quarter, Grade I Farewell to Cryptozot, you are looking at a glorified allowance horse. Second in a minor stakes, second in a little allowance before that, you have to reach back to November of 2007 to locate his last win.

And if you aren’t paying attention, you may not notice a very interesting bit of information. Prior to his November, 2007 win in the Near Between North, he won a race here in California. It was called the Grade I CA Classic.

This is the defending champion, here attempting to repeat.

Without looking, it appears almost natural to assume and then proclaim loudly that he simply isn’t the same horse, he can not repeat, his last few months have been too dreary. Remember, this is a horse that as of the summer of 2007 had won seven races, a maiden race and six allowance races, that over three years of racing. He was not winning big races, ever.

He went ignored at 12-1 in the 2007 CA Classic. He hadn’t even been competing in many races of much importance much less winning any. His last two races were alright, but nothing special – a second in a minor stakes, and then, most recently, a solid third place finish in a Grade I at a mile and a quarter.

Sound familiar?

With just under 500 horses in training throughout the world, Willyam Thirteen Stables and its fifty-three representative trainers find themselves in the limelight with four-year-old Taharka. Bred in Kentucky, the son of Medaglia D’Oro was an easy debut winner in his only start as a two-year-old. His sophomore season saw a dry spell following the maiden win, but he got on track quickly, nailing down three allowance wins in a row before making his stakes debut in the For the Late Bloomers.

Second in the For the Late Bloomers, he was defeated less than a length after taking the lead at the eighth pole, outfinished by a colt named Non Negative, his favored nemesis again on Saturday.

He gave the graded stakes level a shot after the big effort to the much more accomplished Non Negative, finishing a long way back in the Grade III Queen of the County. Of course, a few weeks later, he dropped into a conditioned allowance and fared equally as poorly, perhaps acquitting the stiff company as the cause of his prior drubbing.

He rebounded with an immediate win in the Alot From Colony, a visually and numerically impressive score that was backed up by consecutive solid efforts, leading to a third in the Prospect Drop and a second in the Wisely Without Jed.

That string of solid races prompted his most recent, a stab at the Grade I Smackdown at a mile and a half the day after Independence Day. He finished sixth of fifteen, but was making slow, yet somewhat steady progress on the winner at the wire.

It will go down as clearly and by far his finest race if he should hit the board on Saturday. Or, for the glass half-empty guys – he needs to pick it up and run better than he can if he wants to threaten for the win.

The self proclaimed ‘Evil Empire’, Lenny Numbers’ massive coalition of nearly 60 barns and 600 horses in training have been giving the competition fits for years. With 18,775 career starters, 3,777 times the Evil Empire has brought home a win picture, or twenty-percent of the time, an amazing number over such a huge sample.

Unfortunately for the Evil Empire, four-year-old The Kid Stu is highly, if not completely unlikely to get Lenny Numbers any closer to win number 4,000.

By Seeking the Gold and out of a Northern Dancer mare, The Kid Stu began his career in California, winning six of his first seven, with a second, five of those wins in California. He shipped to Wyoming for his stakes debut, stretching to a mile and a quarter against a small field. He made the lead, opened up, opened up farther yet, and won easily under mild encouragement.

On the heels of five straight wins, culminating in a crushing stakes win in his first try, The Kid Stu was given the test of Champions, shipped to Dubai for the Grade I Sand Castle Classic. It did not go as planned and certainly not as hoped, he pressed for a half mile and then simply plummeted, all the way to last.

A trip to Italy produced a nice win in the Seattle Hawk, but then a jaunt to Finland ended with an eleventh place disaster in the Kentucky Storm a few weeks later.

A return to the United States seemed to pay immediate dividends as he ran a solid, but non-threatening fourth in the Grade I Michael Strike, his best performance against graded company. That segued into last month’s attempt at a mile and a half in the Bright Galoot, a race in which he finished second, beaten just a length after leading for eleven and nine-tenths furlongs.

It is doubtful that The Kid Stu can win this. He has yet to sufficiently compete with the depth and quality of this field successfully, and it seems as though we have seen his best and even if we were to see it again on Saturday, it just doesn’t look like enough.

J. Rogue Farms’ third participant is five-year-old Crumpler Square, a five-year-old A. P. Indy horse out of the Rainbow Quest mare Sir Bercilak.

Crumpler Square is perhaps best known for his performance in West Virginia’s Our Crowns Special, a mile and a half stakes which he won in 2:28.3, believed to be a World Record.

Actually, that is about all he is known for. His career prior to the Our Crowns breakthrough was anything but amazing, as average a form as one might expect to say, with the notable exception that his successes were in marathon distance races.

With allowance wins at ten, eleven, and fourteen furlongs, on both surfaces, and now a stakes win at twelve, J. Rogue set its sights on the two mile More Star Challenge. Falling as far behind as a horse can be without being lapped, was last and twenty-five behind at one point, advancing to within twenty at the half-mile pole and somehow, rallying to win by two and a half lengths.

It is hard to really go over the top with reasons to give this horse a second look, he is best going much farther than ten furlongs. But, for a minor stakes, take a look at what Crumpler Square defeated in the More Star Challenge:

Credit Given, graded stakes winner of over $1.7 million; Worst Day Ever, graded stakes winner of over one million; Geared Down, graded stakes winner of nearly a half-million dollars; Agnelo, a graded winner of one-third of a million dollars; Rhystic Deluge, stakes winner and earner of $282,000; Gone To Indy, a stakes winner with $272,000 bankrolled; Theatrical Prayer, stakes winner, graded stakes placed, and earner of $281,000; Dynamambo, another stakes winner and earner of $356,000. Of the remaining four, two are stakes winners, including a graded placed runner, and all but one of the four are well over the $100,000 mark in career winnings.

He has gone winless in his five races since that win, for the most part performing inadequately for even respectable opinions. He does not own a graded stakes win. Well, not technically. The More Star Challenge should have been awarded Grade I status after it ran – it was just too good of a field to be insulted with the moniker ‘minor stakes’.

A mile and a quarter, Grade I – there is no reasonable argument that calls for Crumpler Square to win under those two basic conditions. Were this race a quarter-mile farther, it might be sensible to digest his current form a bit more thoroughly. On Saturday, he’s a late threat for very little.

Five-year-old Shameless Music exits a tenth place finish in the Grade I Movieland Shiny Cup, nearly a dozen behind west coast hero and divisional powerhouse Gracepointe Prayer, and nearly as far to Saturday’s rivals MalachI Constant and Mambo Bones.

That was his third try at graded company, a bad fifth as a three-year-old in the Grade I KyH Derby and then later a worse eleventh in the Grade III Razorback the following year, neither dissuaded the connections. Of course, he was acquired for $40,000 via the claim box, making his solid allowance form and poor graded stakes form nothing to be ashamed of. In fact, the original owner and trainer required ten tries, from his two-year-old debut in March to his two-year-old finale in December to break his maiden.

After three terrible performances in allowance company, he met the claiming ranks, a group that didn’t do much to inflate his confidence as he again was tattered. But alas, he was also claimed.

The barn switch prompted such a turn around in form, that twice, Investigators and Regulatory Officials monitored the barn looking for the explanation why this colt was claimed in the first place, and how the claim led to Shameless Music’s ascent from perennial last-place finisher to winner of four straight allowance races.

His streak ended and while he ran the occasional big race and flirted with stakes wins, it wasn’t until twenty-seven months later that he scored the elusive stakes win. His stakes win also spawned a new degree of ambition, facing Grade I company. That move, after a trouncing in the Movieland Shiny Cup, and now facing this crowd, appears ill-fated.

Sophomore Held Two Ransom is in good form and headed the right way, but this is a brutal spot to face older foes for the first time.

By War Front and out of Hungry For Money, a daughter of Red Ransom, the winner of the Grade II Trial By Night Stakes has really run nothing but excellent races since departing the Derby trail. A third in the Grade I Chicago Derby prompted unimpressive efforts in both the Grade II Fedirico Stakes and the Grade I Road to the New Yorker, preps for the second and third legs of the Triple Crown, respectively.

The Derby train derailed, he stayed in Florida after the Road to the New Yorker and gutted out a nice allowance win at a mile. That win prefaced his score in the Trial By Night before returning to Florida for the Grade I Smackdown against straight three-year-olds at a flat mile. He finished fifth of eighteen, passing eight horses in the final quarter-mile, beaten just four lengths at 12-1. Just two weeks later he arrived here, in California, for the Grade I Swamps Stakes at a mile and an eighth, checking in fourth.

There are a few reasons to be exceedingly cautious: He has never so much as tried older horses, much less defeated them. Secondly, I think it is difficult to assume that Held Two Ransom will appreciate stretching out to a mile and a quarter. Third, he has yet to prove himself as a Grade I horse at distances at which he is proven, against the age group with which he has been exclusively running.

On Saturday, he needs to tackle a new distance, attempt to win his first Grade I, and do it while facing grizzled, older veterans for the first time. Held Two Ransom, clearly, is facing a stiff task.

Paul Peegeepeegee sends out another three-year-old, Invictus G, a son of Grand Slam out of Silent Ms Indy G, by A. P. Indy.

To his credit, in one of his best performances, he ran a solid second to Held Two Ransom in the Trial By Night, but I spent the better part of a page explaining away his chances, making it all the more difficult to endorse this colt.

Invictus G has won four of sixteen, cracking the exacta in eight, or half of his career starts. But there are a few glaring problems with the other races on his form. He tried older horses in his most recent, it was his first try. He ran last of fourteen in the Kepler Star Challenge.

He has tried graded company twice – the previously documented runner-up to Held Two Ransom and a start in the Grade III B.P.S.R. Memorial Derby Prep, in which he finished twelfth, beaten twenty-three and a quarter lengths.

He has won two races at a mile and two races going much shorter than a mile. He has never won beyond a mile; he has only tried once, the aforementioned twelfth place finish in the B.P.S.R. Memorial Derby Prep.

Like Held Two Ransom, he simply lacks any credentials to give him serious consideration. Unlike Held Two Ransom, his improving form late in the season was interrupted by an absolute thumping against a softer bunch than Saturday’s competition.