Ellis Park Derby Day: Best Racing in History of the “Pea Patch”

Three-year-olds are horse racing’s glamor division, and taking center stage on Sunday’s 10-race program at Ellis Park is the $200,000 RUNHAPPY Ellis Park Derby and its leading Kentucky Derby contender Art Collector.

But during that 1 1/8-mile race, Art Collector jockey Brian Hernandez Jr. will be bringing attention to horses far from the limelight: retired racehorses and industry efforts toward rehoming them after they’re through at the track. In that regard, Hernandez will be wearing the name Second Stride on his white riding pants in the Ellis Park Derby, the first and pending another pandemic the only Kentucky Derby qualifying race ever to be held at the western Kentucky track.

Trainer Tommy Drury, who is 3 for 3 since receiving Art Collector early this year from owner Bruce Lunsford, is on the advisory board for Second Stride, the accredited thoroughbred rescue and aftercare facility in Prospect and Pleasureville outside of Louisville. Drury, Lunsford and Hernandez hope to gain recognition for Second Stride and the concerted effort by horse racing to find safe homes for its retirees, including retraining many for second careers.

For every Art Collector, there are thousands of horses who don’t have a future breeding career. Founded by horsewoman Kim Smith, Second Stride is among 160 facilities across North America accredited by the Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance to offer adoption, rehab and equine-assisted programs as well has sanctuary. There are nine TAA accredited programs in Kentucky, all but Second Stride located close to Lexington. Indiana is home to one accredited organization, Friends of Ferdinand in Indianapolis.

“It’s such a good program and a much-needed program,” Drury said. “As trainer, we’d be lost without Second Stride. They find these horses good homes. Kim and her staff do such a great job. This is just kind of saying thanks for everything they’ve done for us.”

Staff by volunteers, Second Stride provides professional rehabilitation, retraining and placement of retired thoroughbred racehorses, adopting out an average of 100 horses a year, including 83 the first seven months of 2020. The program specializes in giving retired thoroughbreds the training they need to succeed in a second and sometimes third profession, such as with horses no longer being bred. The organization is one of the few aftercare facilities that will take male horses that haven’t been gelded.

“We transition them to whatever each individual horse wants to do,” said Smith while watching Art Collector trainer earlier in the week at the Skylight training center in Oldham County. “As Tommy tries to get into their brain when they’re here, we try to get into their brain and figure out what their next mission is going to be. We’ve placed horses in everything from polo, jumping, dressage to family horses. It’s amazing to find out what these horses can do, the thoroughbred, and how versatile they are. Barrel horses, we’ve had some police work — especially a mounted unit that likes the big black horses.”

To have Hernandez displaying Second Stride on his leg, Smith said, “For us, it’s just humbling that they would consider us. It’s mind-blowing the national coverage just to get aftercare out there, and all the horsemen are doing for the horses. Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance has been life-changing for our program and for the horses, with the sponsorship we get and also the mentoring and the education they provide our program in how to exceed. To have these hometown heroes being at Ellis is just going to be amazing. Tommy helped us set the foundation of the program and Brian Hernandez and his family come to our events and support us. So it’s awesome. We’re just proud of Tommy and Brian and the horse. It’s super exciting.”

What assuredly will be the largest contingent of media in track history will converge on Ellis Park, located on a strip of land north of the Ohio River, thanks to the New Madrid earthquake of 1812 changing the river’s course. Media members at the facility for the first time also will find that Ellis Park might be the only track with a cash crop in its infield: soybeans, hence the nickname the Pea Patch. Ellis’ 1 1/8-mile dirt track also is the largest outside the East Coast that isn’t synthetic. Into its 98th season, Ellis Park — whose first races back in 1922 were for standardbreds — also is the second-oldest track in Kentucky, trailing only Churchill Downs.

The Ellis Park Derby (approximate post time 5:10 p.m. CT), with its winner collecting 50 points toward Kentucky Derby qualifying, is the last of a stakes quintet on packed card that attracted 118 horses for 10 races. Also featured:

The $100,000 Groupie Doll (4:40 p.m. CT) for fillies and mares at a mile, with Grade 1 winner Street Band taking on fellow millionaire Lady Apple in a field of 12, with three other horses awaiting defections to make the capacity field.

$100,000 RUNHAPPY Audubon Oaks (post 4:10 p.m. CT) for 3-year-old fillies at seven-eighths of a mile, a field of 11 that includes Keeneland’s Grade 3 Beaumont runner-up Sconsin, the 7-2 favorite, and Maryland shipper Hello Beautiful. The Audubon Oaks offers 17 points toward qualifying for the Sept. 4 Kentucky Oaks, including 10 to its winner. With its seven-furlong distance, the race also is a logical steppingstone to Churchill Downs’ Grade 2 Eight Belles Stakes at the same distance on Sept. 4.

$100,000 RUNHAPPY Juvenile (2:14 p.m. CT) for 2-year-olds at seven-eighths of a mile, with Libertyrun garnering attention in the field of seven as the first winner sired by Claiborne stallion Runhappy, the champion sprinter who is American horse racing’s biggest sponsor, including of the RUNHAPPY Summer Meet at Ellis Park, all of the meet’s 2-year-old open maiden races and Saturday’s RUNHAPPY Travers at Saratoga.

The $100,000 RUNHAPPY Debutante (3:10 p.m. CT) for 2-year-old fillies drew a full field of 12, headed by 3-1 favorite Crazy Beautiful, an impressive maiden winner on turf at Ellis Park; Delaware invader Hipnotizada and big Lone Star Park debut winner Lacey Boss.

One-horse stable Dean Martini raising the bar for owners

To Annie Jessee of Louisville just having the chance to go out to the Churchill Downs stable area is the home run scored when her Raise the BAR Racing partnership claimed Dean Martini for $50,000 out of a maiden-claiming race three starts back. So imagine her excitement in having the 3-year-old gelding finish a good second in an allowance race, followed by victory in Thistledown’s Grade 3 Ohio Derby and now taking on one of the favorites for the Kentucky Derby in Sunday’s $200,000 RUNHAPPY Ellis Park Derby.

“When people say unbelievable, I do mean that,” Jessee said. “I’m just very happy on Friday mornings when I go to the backside. I love pulling in Churchill Downs and smelling the barn area and hearing horses on the track. That’s my home run, just to be out there and be a part of it, to be a part of this industry. I love horses and I love being around them.”

Jessee, a retired school teacher as well as attorney, formed Raise the BAR Racing several years ago with sister-in-law Diane Jessee, Brad Rives and Rives’ daughter’s father-in-law Rick Riney. Besides the owners being lawyers, BAR also referrs to the first-name initials of Brad, Annie and Rick. And if Dean Martini should pull off the upset Sunday of Keeneland’s Grade 2 Toyota Blue Grass winner Art Collector and Grade 3 Indiana Derby winner Shared Sense, the BAR reference will have another meaning with the group that is hiring a van and driver to take them to Ellis Park.

“We are a celebratory group,” Annie Jessee acknowledged.

Raise the BAR pretty much campaigns one horse at a time, claiming Dean Martini with money earned upon the private sale at the end of the Fair Grounds’ winter meet of a Louisiana-bred horse named Remembermis. Trainer Tom Amoss presented the group with three horses to claim, with Jessee preferring Dean Martini. While the gelding was 0 for 7, he was racing very well with three seconds and three thirds. He led all the way to win by 6 3/4 lengths when claimed on May 17.

“It’s just amazing. We’re a little one-horse stable,” Jessee said. “Tom has been so good to us and very, very careful with our money. It’s been neat, we’ve just had so much fun.”

COVID restrictions just made it easier for Jessee to stay home from the Ohio Derby, watching it at her home with Hayley Amoss, the trainer’s daughter who is a close friend of Jessee’s daughter Lizzy.

“We were watching it on my lucky UK basketball TV – you have to have one of those,” she said. “We’re watching the race and Hayley goes, ‘Miss Annie, you’re going to win the Ohio Derby!’ Then we were just screaming.”

Dean Martini was not nominated to the Triple Crown and would require a supplementary payment of $45,000 plus entry fees to run in the Kentucky Derby. With 20 qualifying points for winning the Ohio Derby, he could wrap up a spot in the 20-horse field with a victory (worth 50 points) and likely secure a berth with a second (20 points) and maybe a third (10). But no one in Dean Martini’s camp is looking ahead to the First Saturday in September.

“Oh, he’s tough,” Jessee said of Art Collector. “But we won’t know unless we try. This just tells us where we need to go next. There’s a point where you have to say OK, that’s out of your reach.

“There are a lot of good horses in this race. Shared Sense, you need to be mindful of all of them.”

James Graham, who rode Dean Martini in the Churchill Downs allowance race, is back aboard at Ellis Park.

Bradley back in Groupie Doll with Divine Queen

Not many people get to run in a stakes named for a horse they owned, trained and bred. But Buff Bradley is back for the second year with Divine Queen in the $100,000 Groupie Doll, named for the two-time female sprint champion he trained and co-owned and co-bred. Divine Queen finished second in last year’s Groupie Doll behind the now-retired multiple stakes-winner Go Google Yourself.

“She got turned out in the middle of winter, then the pandemic came along,” Bradley said. “She’s doing super, though. She came flying to finish fourth in her first race back at Churchill Downs, and now we’re going back to the Groupie Doll. We’re hoping she’s ready to go. Of course there will be a lot of star power in there again, but Divine Queen ran a big race last year. She’s probably better at seven-eighths of a mile, but she can carry the mile. She’s a double stakes-winner at Churchill Downs, but it would be great to win a race that was named after one of my homebreds with a homebred.

“We do like to participate in the Groupie Doll. It would be even better if we could get a homebred to win it.”

Divine Queen is from the same female family as Bradley’s colorful graded-stakes winner and now stallion The Player, a fan favorite on social media for his antics and the way he sits on his haunches like a dog.

“I don’t know how you’d say it, if The Player were her nephew,” he said. “But she’s very closely related.”

Divine Queen is ridden by three-time Kentucky Derby-winning jockey Calvin Borel.

Groupie Doll twice ran in the stakes when it was called the Gardenia, winning as a 3-year-old in 2011 and then finishing a close third off a long layoff in 2013 – a performance that helped launch her to winning her second straight Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint and Eclipse Award championship as outstanding female sprinter.

A Runhappy baby in the RUNHAPPY Juvenile

Owner James “Mattress Mac” McIngvale can get some of his sponsorship money back with his 2-year-old colt Libertyrun in the $100,000 RUNHAPPY Juvenile on Sunday’s RUNHAPPY Ellis Park Derby card at the RUNHAPPY Summer Meet at Ellis Park. McIngvale campaigned Runhappy, who won an Ellis Park allowance race in a 3-year-old season that culminated in winning the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Sprint and the Eclipse Award as outstanding male sprinter.

Libertyrun became the first son or daughter of the Claiborne stallion Runhappy to win a race, powering to a 6 1/4-length victory in his July 8 debut at Indiana Grand on the Indiana Derby undercard. Now he’ll try to become Runhappy’s first stakes-winner.

The performance at Indiana Grand at 23-1 odds, and after breaking from post 12, was an emotional one for the Runhappy camp. (By the way, the horse’s name is spelled in all capital letters when used in sponsorships.)

“He’s homegrown, and it was very unexpected,” said Laura Wohlers, who trains Libertyrun for McIngvale, her brother in law, and who was involved extremely with Runhappy’s training. “First Runhappy winner, all that adding up makes for an emotional day.”

Libertyrun could take advantage of being foaled in the Pelican State in the restricted $60,000 D.S. “Shine” Young Futurity Aug. 29 at Evangeline Downs, where he’d face fellow Louisiana-breds.

“This race is a good race in between,” Wohlers said. “And this race will give us an idea of where he is and which direction we head next…. It would be awfully fun to have a Runhappy win the RUNHAPPY Juvenile, but he’ll have to improve quite a bit to step up and win. But, hey, you never know. He’s doing very well. He surprised us when he won first out in Indiana, and he might surprise us” Sunday.

Libertyrun will be ridden again by Miguel Mena. “He put in a good effort, did it the right way and was very professional,” the jockey said. “He showed some speed, got in a good position. When I asked him, he picked it up. He galloped out well, too. I worked him here a couple of weeks three-quarters of a mile, and he got over the track really well. He’s got some talent.”

Wohlers said that Libertyrun shares his dad’s characteristic of sleeping a lot.

“He’s a little bit more energetic,” she said. “Runhappy was always a very calm horse. This horse is very, very calm in the stall. But when you get him out of the stall, he’s just full of energy. So he’s a little different in that aspect. But he seems to have a very good mind, just kind of does everything right for us.”

“If he wins tomorrow, it would absolutely make our year,” she said Saturday. “Then we’ll decide if we want to take him to a bigger stakes, like the RUNHAPPY Hopeful at Saratoga. That would probably the goal if he wins.”

The even-money favorite is the Steve Asmussen-trained Cowan, who won his debut at Churchill Downs in good time (4 1/2 furlongs in 51 3/5 seconds) but stretches out of seven-eighths of a mile in his first start in 2 1/2 months.

Medicine Tail, a snappy maiden winner at Ellis Park in his third attempt, could add to a strong meet for trainer Dane Kobiskie and owner PTK LLC, who brought a meet-leading six wins into Saturday’s racing. Joe Rocco is back aboard the 3-1 shot in the morning line.

What they’re saying (Ellis Park Derby edition) …

Jockey Florent Geroux on Indiana Derby winner Shared Sense on drawing post 12: “Not the greatest, but we have much choice. Hopefully there’s a good pace in front of us and we’ll see what we can do from there.”

Shared Sense was second to Art Collector in a four-horse allowance race at Churchill Downs in which Art Collector led all the way in a field devoid of speed. “It looks like we have some speed in the race on paper,” Geroux said. “There should be a little bit more pace than the last time we ran together. But Art Collector is definitely the horse to beat. He won the Blue Grass pretty easily and is a very nice horse. My horse is good, and I think the mile and an eighth is in his favor, for sure. He’s a horse who doesn’t get tired and looks like he appreciates the distance. It’s going to be tough to beat Art Collector, but you never know. It’s a neutral track. My horse has never run on it and the same for Art Collector. It could depends on who’s going to like the surface, and who knows? It might be somebody else, too.”

Jockey Mitchell Murrill on Ellis Park Derby contender Necker Island, who was third in the Indiana Derby after being claimed by his owners for $100,000 out of a four-horse allowance-optional claiming race won by Art Collector, with Indiana Derby winner Shared Sense second: “We had the outside post (9) in the Indiana Derby, and when he broke, he kind of fell down to his knees leaving there. He got himself back up and got in a pretty good position after that. He had to make up a little bit from the start, and that may have gotten him a little tired. But other than that, he ran well. We’re excited to have him run in the Ellis Park Derby. Art Collector and Shared Sense are both good horses, but they can be beat and hopefully we beat them. If he gets a good break, he’ll be very competitive.”

Adam Beschizza will ride Truculent, upon whom he won a Fair Grounds maiden race and who most recently was seventh on the grass at Ellis Park, for the red-hot barn of trainer Jack Sisterson: “Listen, it’s a very ‘warm’ race. But the way Jack’s horses have been running of late, you’d like to think that once one starts winning, the rest follow suit. I know he’s a very talented animal. He probably was a little bit intimidated on the inside last out, and I don’t think that’s a spot he enjoys being in. I think on the dirt he gets a much smoother trip. Listen, they thought a lot of him. When I broke his maiden at Fair Grounds, he did that ultra smart and he was very forward-going that day on the front end. He’s definitely got an engine. Let’s just hope the dirt is his forte moving forward.”

On Art Collector: “I won his maiden at Kentucky Downs. Super-smart horse,” Beschizza said. “It just goes to show how talented he is. He’s just as good on turf as dirt, believe me. He was second at Saratoga first out when Joe Sharp had him. Listen he has a huge, huge future. He has a beautiful pedigree to translate onto the dirt. He has a beautiful mind. You can just see in the videos lately, the way he stands, puffs his chest out. He’s a true professional. I think he is the real deal. I’m sure he’ll stay the extra distance. He’s a tough one to beat. But, listen, we’re in there. Nobody can tell until the fat lady sings, right?”

RUNHAPPY Ellis Park Derby

Purse: $200,000. Post time: Sunday at 5:10 p.m. CT (10th race). Distance: 1 1/8 miles. Division: 3-year-olds.

PP horse (weight) trainer/jockey odds

(AE) Also eligible – needs scratch to run