Barnes: Justify ‘breathing fire,’ Restoring Hope showing ‘good energy’

by NYRA Press Office

Triple Crown hopeful Justify had a controlled 1 1/8-mile gallop Friday morning over a sealed Churchill Downs track in preparation of the Grade 1 Belmont Stakes, and assistant trainer Jimmy Barnes had his hands full leading the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner off the track with his pony.

“He’s breathing fire, this horse is right now,” said Barnes, who is overseeing Justify’s training in Kentucky while Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert is in California. “We’ll be happy to get a nice training day into him tomorrow, and he’ll settle back down.”

Barnes also took Justify, with exercise rider Humberto Gomez in the saddle, to the starting gate to stand.

“We chose today to be our gate day just because the track was a little on the firmer side,” Barnes said of the track being packed down, or sealed, to keep the overnight rain from penetrating into the surface. “We didn’t want to do too much with track conditions. With him working this coming week, we weren’t really going to have a chance to get back up to the gate.”

Among the crowd of spectators watching Justify was Elliott Walden, president and CEO of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner’s co-owner WinStar Farm.

“He’s really doing well,” Walden said. “Couldn’t be happier with the way he’s doing. We’ve got eight days to go. Like Bob said when he worked the other day, it was almost like, ‘Man, I wish it were this weekend and not next.’ We’re in a waiting game, just hoping every day goes as well as today.”

Walden was a long-time trainer before he left for WinStar Farm. He knows as well as anyone the tight-knit nature of the industry where you might be competitors one day and teammates the next.

Now on the side of trying to have American racing’s 13th Triple Crown winner, Walden trained Victory Gallop, whose dramatic nose victory in the 1998 Belmont Stakes thwarted the Triple Crown for the Baffert-trained Real Quiet. WinStar has won the Belmont Stakes twice before, with the Bill Mott-trained Drosselmeyer in 2010 and Steve Asmussen-trained Creator in 2016. Now those Hall of Fame horsemen will try to be the spoiler with Juddmonte Farms’ Hofburg (Mott) and Winchell Thoroughbreds’ Tenfold (Asmussen).

“That’s the great thing about the horse business,” Walden said. “It’s a close-knit family. You’re trying to compete against each other, trying to win. But you also have relationships with people so that even when you don’t win, you feel OK about it. The backside is a close place. It’s all connected.”

Walden said he also watched Tenfold galloping two miles during the 7:30 a.m. training slot designated for Belmont Stakes horses. “Tenfold looks great,” he said. “I was up at Saratoga last week and Hofburg looks well. It’s going to be a great race.

“Winning the Derby, to me, I can’t imagine it getting any better than that. But we’ll see what the Triple Crown would feel like. It’s still pretty calm. I think next week it will get turned up to another level. Because with the Derby there are 20 horses taking focus, probably five or six that you guys [in the media] focus on. When you come into a Triple Crown, I think 80 percent of the attention will be on Justify. So it will be pretty crazy next week. But I don’t see it as any different than trying to win the Derby, I really don’t.”

Walden said Justify’s talent is his biggest attribute for the Belmont.

“He’s obviously the best of the generation, I think he’s proven that,” he said. “So I think it’s his race to lose. Now having said that, there are plenty of great horses who have lost the Belmont. He’s not cinch by any stretch of the imagination. But he’s a horse with extreme talent, and I think that’s his biggest attribute. He’s a better horse than these horses right now. With that being said, the three weeks, how will that play into it? The mile and a half, how will that play into it? The great thing about the Triple Crown is there are always these variables. That’s what makes horse racing great, and while there will be 10, 12 horses to load up against him to try to beat him. That’s what it’s all about.”

Also galloping Friday at Churchill Downs, albeit right after Justify, was his Belmont Stakes-bound stablemate Restoring Hope, who stood in the other starting gate in the mile chute. Both horses are likely to work Monday, then flying to New York Wednesday.

“He’s fresh, happy, very good energy,” Barnes said of Restoring Hope, who was 12th in the Grade 3 Pat Day Mile after taking third in Aqueduct’s Grade 2 Wood Memorial.

Bravazo gets a walk day following Thursday breeze

Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas’ Belmont Stakes contender, Preakness runner-up Bravazo, got the day off from training Friday after working a mile in 1:42 3/5 on Thursday.

One of the strange aspects of watching the Preakness amid the heavy fog is how Bravazo seems to disappear rounding out of the far turn and into the top of the stretch. Calumet Farm’s horse is clearly seen in third tracking Justify and Good Magic while in front of Tenfold, then vanishes. Tenfold makes a big move to go after the leaders, and then Bravazo suddenly blasts out of the fog to nearly nab Justify. The official Equibase chart says Bravazo was third by a total of three lengths at the second point of call, then is fifth by five lengths behind Justify with an eighth-mile to go before losing by a half-length.

“I told Luis, ‘If he’s on the lead by himself, you’ve got to move early on him, you’ve got to try to run him down,’” said trainer D. Wayne Lukas, referring to jockey Luis Saez. “But if somebody is doing the heavy lifting and helping us, sit and wait. And wait. And then take a run. What happened, he said, is coming off the turn, both Good Magic and Justify got the first run and opened up another length on him. He said, ‘I knew I had to get going.’ He was just late starting. He had plenty of horse, he said. He said, ‘If I had to do it over again, I’d have started about 20 yards earlier.’ I told him, ‘As long as they’re pressuring him, just be patient.’”

“In that race, I think we could have beaten him, if everything was perfect,” he said of Justify, whom he believes will be even more formidable in the Belmont. “But he still won the race, so be it. But I think as that one turned out, we had a chance to beat him. The next one will be a whole different deal. It just means you better put us in the superfecta.”

More than 30 members of the Churchill Downs Racing Club are expected to be on hand when the Lukas-trained Warrior’s Club runs the Grade 1, $1.2 million Runhappy Metropolitan Handicap on Belmont Stakes Day.

Warrior’s Club has 200 owners who put up $500 apiece as Churchill Downs launched the Churchill Downs Racing Club two years ago. The club partnerships are designed so money goes toward purchasing the horse and paying expenses and trainer fees. No dividends are paid, with the partnership to dissolve when the money runs out.

“A one-turn mile is right down his alley,” Lukas said. “He’s one of those wear-’em-down types. They could be lucky enough to have two in the Breeders’ Cup, I’m telling you…. I just told the group that every owner in Kentucky, no matter how rich or how poor, would like to have the success they’re having on a $50,000 horse turning out like Warrior’s Club. Only in Hollywood do they make this stuff up.”