Did you see how all the pieces fit together on the weekend? Trainer Roger Attfield was hoping to win the Vice Regent Stakes at Woodbine on Sunday with Queen’s Plate winner Not Bourbon. But Not Bourbon smacked his leg or something a few hours before the race and because there was a visible lump, Attfield, choosing caution for his racing star, had the horse scratched, which I’m sure was disappointing to jockey Jone Jones who has already had some brilliant moments on Not Bourbon.
Attfield had entered a second horse in the Vice Regent Stakes – Sand Cove, a horse that had never raced on turf. To make his work even more challenging, Sand Cove’s regular jockey Richards Dos Ramos had been taken to Saratoga by owner Gus Schickedanz and trainer Debbie England to ride Breeders’ Stakes winner Marlang in the mile and a three-sixteenth Saranac Stakes on the grass.
No problem. Backup rider Slade Callaghan rode a nifty race on Sand Cove, watched the speed then turned his horse on in the stretch to win by half a length at odds of 5-1. So now, what’s Dos Ramos thinking? I mean at 46, the guy doesn’t win too many Stakes races anymore. Had he cost himself by going to Saratoga? Callaghan’s take from the Vice Regent Stakes was about $7,500.
An hour after Sand Cove’s win, Dos Ramos has a lovely, completely unstressful trip on Marlang. Just as the brochure had suggested, Marlang went to the lead, and never let another horse by, galloping to the wire almost two lengths the best at odds of 5-2. A win on the second last day in a Stakes race at Saratoga? It doesn’t get much better.
Oh, and Jono Jones. There wasn’t anyone outside Woodbine with a tin can collecting for him. Jones won 8 races on the weekend. Four of them were Stakes. On Monday, he captured the Simcoe, the Algoma and the Halton Stakes in succession.
There are a million stories of shattering defeat and profound disappointment at the racetrack. The preceding tales are not among them.
Click here to subscribe to Gross' blog