ARCADIA, Calif. – Trainer Steve Asmussen continued to marvel the morning after Kentucky Oaks winner Untapable captured the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff by 1 1/4 lengths over Don’t Tell Sophia.
Untapable captured her first four starts of the year by a combined 31 lengths, the shortest margin being 4 1/2 lengths in the Kentucky Oaks. A fifth-place showing in Monmouth Park’s Haskell against males and a length victory in Parx’s $1 million Cotillion made some question if some of the zip had been taken off the filly’s fastball.
Not Asmussen.
“At no point do you doubt her talent,” he said. “She is truly special. With the target being the Oaks when the year started, and her running so brilliantly there, you take a step back. The next target was the Distaff, and she regained her Oaks form at the ideal time.”
Untapable the morning after winning the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. iPhone photo
Not that he wasn’t worried early in the race.
“I was definitely concerned early, watching Goldencents hold on earlier in the day” in the Dirt Mile after setting a blazing pace, Asmussen said. “Speed on the inside was not a disadvantage. She was awfully wide going into the first turn. Down the backside, Close Hatches moved up on her outside very easily. Rosie (Napravnik) chose to let her go by. But past the half-mile pole, you could see her pull Rosie forward and the filly went about her business well.”
Asmussen’s main string currently is based at Churchill Downs. But he sent Untapable and Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile runner-up Tapiture to Santa Anita the day after they ran in Philadelphia to prepare for Friday’s races.
“Tapiture ran a very game race,” Asmussen said. “Untapable coming through with a brilliant victory in the Distaff, very proud of the horse, very proud of the staff — both being 3-year-olds, spring of the year and concentrating on the Oaks and the Derby, to put together the fall campaign that they have and put in such big races when it mattered so much.”
Tapiture and Untapable will ship to Kentucky Nov. 11, likely getting a break at owner Ron Winchell’s farm near Lexington before joining Asmussen’s major string in New Orleans for the winter.
“Tapiture, from Derby time to Breeders’ Cup time is a stronger, more attractive version,” Asmussen said. “With a little break if he’ll fill out a bit and stuff, we might plan on targeting the Classic next year instead of the Dirt Mile.”
Asmussen expects Lucky Player to run well in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and Mico Margarita to do the same in the Sprint. Both will be prices. You are forewarned.
It all comes in a year which started with The New York Times running an excoriating story about Asmussen’s operation, based on heavily edited (and in part deceptive) video that the animal-rights group PETA assembled from video secretly taken by a PETA employee who got a job in the barn as a hotwalker.
PETA filed complaints of animal cruelty against Asmussen and top assistant Scott Blasi in New York and Kentucky, charges the men and their lawyer vociferously deny. Both states said they would investigate. To date, no findings have been announced and no charges have been lodged against the trainers.
But the topic was so controversial and hot at the time that Asmussen lost many of his horses, with Ron Winchell – owner of Untapable and Tapiture – steadfastly sticking by his trainer.
Asmussen doesn’t address it, but there has to be more than a little satisfaction in his memorable year, especially given that Jockey Club chairman Ogden Mills “Dinny” Phipps sent out an open letter in the spring saying Asmussen should turn his Derby and Oaks horses over to another trainer for the good of the game. And the fact that Asmussen was taken off the Hall of Fame ballot amid the controversy.
What Asmussen did say was this when the subject was broached: “We’ve had an excellent year. You continue to do what you do to get yourself here. We realize how blessed we are with horses of this caliber and we’ll continue to do the thing by them.”
Making it all the more special is the long-time association between the Asmussen and Winchell families. When Asmussen and Ron Winchell were kids, Verne Winchell was sending his young horses to Keith and Marilyn Asmussen’s training center in Laredo, Texas, to get their earliest training.
“Family is extremely important to me,” Asmussen said. “I’m in racing because of my parents, grew up in their barn. To be so fortunate to have my family involved in racing at the level it’s carried us to, my parents and (wife) Julie and the boys as well, to be able to celebrate a moment like Untapable’s Distaff victory and everybody feel a big part of it, is truly special.”
