Train the Trainer rolls to victory in Wednesday’s Mike Lee to kick off the New York Showcase Day portion of the card at Saratoga. Coglianese Photo.
Rob Atras picked up the phone to call fellow trainer Mark Glatt shortly after the 3-year-old gelding Train the Trainer showed up at his Belmont Park barn from California this spring with a short assessment.
“Geez, look at this horse. I love this horse,” Atras said, immediately impressed with the New York-bred son of Dialed In. “He was big, strong, (had) good bone on him. Big, tall and the way he carries himself. He has a lot of presence.”
Atras loved Train the Trainer a bit more when he romped to a 5-length victory in his first start in the Empire State and even more after a 2 3/4-length tally to open the New York Showcase Day portion of the card Wednesday at Saratoga Race Course.
Jon Taisey of Hibiscus Stable isn’t surprised by the love. He liked the then colt plenty when he and the Hibiscus team sent him down to Lexington for the 2023 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky October yearling sale. Hip 590, the ninth foal out of the Forestry mare Heavenly View, attracted plenty of attention on the sales grounds but not a ton of action in the ring.
“I loved him ever since he was a baby,” Taisey said. “I never thought that he was a horse we could really afford to bring back and syndicate, so we brought him to the sale there and honestly was super disappointed when we only got $52,000 for him.”
Glatt purchased the colt, on behalf of Alipony Racing and Saints or Sinners. He eventually went to California, where he didn’t race at 2 before surfacing in a 6-furlong maiden race April 6 at Santa Anita Park. He finished second that day, splitting a pair of Bob Baffert-trained first-time starters Goal Oriented and Sierra Silver.
“He put in a heck of a race and I knew at that point he was the real deal,” Taisey said. “I called the owners and tried to get them to at least send him back or sell him to clients of mine. Well, they decided to send him but not sell him. Mark handed over the reins to Rob and obviously Rob has done a great job with the horse to this point.”
The job now includes back-to-back victories, the latter in 1:23.92 for the 7 furlongs over the fast track in the opening flat stakes of the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival at Saratoga. Under Irad Ortiz Jr., Train the Trainer went to post as the 9-5 second choice behind Prince Valiant and five others in the Mike Lee.
Train The Trainer went to the lead from the start and clicked off an opening quarter-mile in :23.09 ahead of Prince Valiant, First Pitch and Soontobeking. He maintained that margin around the far turn and to the half in :46.30.
Ortiz stayed busy on Train the Trainer approaching the stretch and they widened from there, opening up a 2-length lead in midstretch on the way to victory. Soontobeking, second behind Prince Valiant last time out in the Times Square division of the New York Stallion Series Stakes April 13 at Aqueduct, finished a head in front of that same rival for the place spot with Calling Card, First Pitch and Smilensaycheese completing the field. Train The Trainer picked up $110,000 for the win, boosting his bankroll to $167,000.
“Everything you see now started out in California,” Atras said. “They started with him and did all the base work. He had the one race then when we had him we just led him over, stayed out of his way and let him progress. There’s nothing we really did any differently, just let him grow up and get bigger and stronger.”
Foaled at Waldorf Farm in North Chatham, Train the Trainer is a half-brother to six winners out of Heavenly Vision. She’s a half-sister to multiple graded stakes winner and sire Cairo Prince and the Grade 1-placed Empire Maker mare Nonna Mia, the dam of Grade 1 winner Outwork. – Tom Law
Kay Cup holds off her challengers in Wednesday’s Bouwerie Stakes at Saratoga. Coglianese Photo/Chelsea Durand.
• Dan Zanatta walked off the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sales grounds after a long few days of inspections of the New York-bred yearlings in the 2023 catalog. He put a filly from the first crop of Instagrand on the short list of potential purchases for NY Final Furlong Racing Stable, just not quite into the top five prospects.
NY Final Furlong, a partnership operation headed up by Zanatta and Vince Roth perhaps best known for campaigning New York-bred champion Venti Valentine and multiple stakes winner Espresso Shot, exclusively buys fillies to syndicate. Zanatta and Roth, along with members of the Rice family that helps with inspections, liked the filly out of the Lemon Drop Kid mare Gypso Go.
“She was probably a top six filly on our list and honestly, probably at the bottom of the list going into the final day of the selection process,” Zanatta said. “Then the last day she just kept showing better and showing better. She was a filly that every time we looked at her we upgraded her. We ended up upgrading her to the top of the list.”
Bidding through Ricehorse, NY Final Furlong landed the filly for $100,000. Now almost two years later and with Electric City Racing and Sportsmen Stable on board as partners, the filly named Kay Cup continued her ascent up the New York-bred 3-year-old filly ranks thanks to a victory in the $200,000 Bouwerie Stakes on New York Showcase Day.
Kay Cup improved to 2-for-3 with her 3-length win over Charlotte’s Heart in the Bouwerie. Irad Ortiz Jr., who rode two winners on the Showcase Day card, guided Kay Cup to victory for trainer Jorge Abreu in 1:23.79 for the 7 furlongs on the fast main track.
Abreu trained Venti Valentine, recently named 2024 New York-bred champion older dirt female after winning the 2-year-old filly title in 2021, and didn’t hesitate to compare the two after Wednesday’s Bouwerie.
“Since Day 1 we have liked the filly,” Abreu said. “Her presentation in the morning and the way she trains, she’s very professional. Everything about her. She’s never had a bad day and that’s important for fillies. They can go the wrong or right way and she’s always been the right way. She could be the next Venti Valentine.”
Zanatta and Roth actually hoped Kay Cup could follow in the early hoofprints of Venti Valentine and Espresso Shot.
“When we first bought her and after her first race, in my mind this was our Busher horse,” Roth said of the open-company 3-year-old filly stakes typically run in early March at Aqueduct. “We won the Busher with Espresso Shot, we won the Busher with Venti Valentine. She had a slight setback and needed some time off, so we couldn’t get her ready for that race. We brought he back and she won at Aqueduct (in an April 27 maiden) and now we have a new plan in mind.
“I don’t know if Jorge is going to like this but I told him there’s a couple pretty big races in August at Saratoga that I’d like to see her in.”
Bred by Caperlane Farm and sold at the 2023 Saratoga New York-bred sale by Hunter Valley Farm, agent, Kay Cup is the second foal out of the winning Gypsy Jo.
Kay Cup is also part-owned by ESPN Radio personality Anita Marks through America’s Best Racing’s “A Stake in Stardom” program made popular this spring thanks to social media influencer Griffin Johnson’s part ownership of Grade 1 winner and classics competitor Sandman. Kay Cup picked up $110,000 for the Bouwerie victory to boost her bankroll to $161,500. – Tom Law
