Al Stall Jnr ready to take Blame for beating Zenyatta
The big question that just about everyone is asking is will Zenyatta handle the dirt course at Churchill Downs?
Al Stall Jnr knows that his horse, Blame, is right at home on the Kentucky dirt. Two major wins – in the Grade Two Clark Handicap last year and the Grade One Stephen Foster Handicap in June - prove that. And, just to remind anyone who was watching yesterday morning, Blame clocked 1minute 03.20seconds in a five-furlong workout under big-race jockey Garrett Gomez before he runs in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
“We’ve geared his whole career, virtually, to this particular day because we knew it was at Churchill Downs,” Stall said. “He’s got a great record at Churchill and, more importantly, he’s run good races in the fall. The track is a little different in the cooler weather than during the summer, it tends to be a little bit looser, and I think that’s a real help for us.”
“We pointed to the latter half of the year and, luckily, we’ve made it here in one piece.”
One piece, but with two good shots in the locker, although J.B.’s Thunder has taken a slightly unusual route to take his place in the line up for the Juvenile. Despite a classic dirt pedigree – by Kentucky Derby winner Thunder Gulch out of an Unbridled´s Song mare – the colt comes to the biggest two-year-old dirt race of the season having won his two starts on turf and Polytrack.
He started by winning a nine-furlong maiden on the grass at Saratoga in August and then stepped up in class to win the Grade One Dixiana Breeders' Futurity at Keeneland three weeks ago, but this was all part of Stall’s long-term plan. “This horse has been based at Churchill Downs all summer, so he was here for three-and-a-half months before he ran at Saratoga,” he explained. “He’s had gate works, dirt schooling and he’s very comfortable. The reason we ran him on the turf was because we wanted to run him around two turns and at Saratoga they don’t dirt races for babies around two turns.
“We went to the Breeders' Futurity to take advantage of a few edges we thought we had. I have a barn at Keeneland year-round and lot of horses who ran in the Breeders' Futurity couldn’t train there because all the stalls are taken up by the yearlings for the big sale there. So they all came at the last minute while we were there for a month. It was home-field advantage.”
It was an away fixture for Blame last time out when, having broken into the big league by beating Quality Road in the Grade One Whitney Handicap at Saratoga in August, he tried 10 furlongs for the first time in the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont.
Gomez came in for some criticism for allowing Haynesfield to sit on a soft lead in the Jockey Club, which Blame could not reel in down the home stretch as he was beaten four lengths, but Stall was happy enough with what was a skirmish as opposed to the full-blown war that he had on his mind for the Classic.
“The Whitney was a major goal, and it was in a nice rhythm from the Foster, and then we decided to give him a little breather. He had eight weeks between the Whitney and the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont. The shipping didn’t go quite as well as we wanted – a tropical storm hit the east coast and our plane was delayed. We got out-run that day but the conditions didn’t quite suit us. But we didn’t use too much energy and we think we have a lot of gas in the tank for the big day.
“I think back on our own track and a full, two turn mile-and-a-quarter race, he’ll definitely stay the trip and he’s fresh.”
In a race where Quality Road looks likely to be creating the speed for the hold-up horses there is a scenario where Gomez could find himself trying to ride the race looking over his shoulder to spot Mike Smith laying back on Zenyatta. “I don’t know much about Zenyatta except for what you see,” Stall said.
“She looks like she falls out last almost every time and I think we’ll be closer than Zenyatta [to the lead]. I think Garrett will be cognisant of her behind him and I’m sure once he set him down, and making a nice run, I imagine he’ll start thinking about when that big mare of Mike Smith’s will come up.
“I’ll just leave that in his hands but we’ll be ahead of Zenyatta under the wire the first time - and hopefully the second time.”
Blame certainly has enough local knowledge to know where the wire is.
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