Castanon avoids injury in spill

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Jockey Jesus Castanon was back breezing horses Friday, one day after tumbling to the Churchill Downs turf when his mount in the eighth race, Good Offense, ducked out suddenly near the wire while seemingly on his way to victory and unseated him. He said he was sore but “pretty lucky” to have fallen outside of trailing horses.

Good Offense, a 2-year-old First Defense gelding owned by Amerman Racing, also avoided injury, trainer Paul McGee said.

That meant most of the pain was felt by the horse’s disappointed connections and bettors who backed him at 7-1 odds and were within mere yards of collecting a rewarding payoff. Instead, Stormcast, who had been passed by Good Offense, won by default at a $69 mutuel.

The incident illustrated the racetrack maxim that there are a million ways to lose a horse race. “Make that a million and one,” McGee said.

Castanon speculated that his mount, making just his third start, shied from lights at the finish line or from the infield timing display. He said that as he fell to the turf, he hoped he was clear of other horses. “After a couple seconds, I knew I was okay,” he said.

Castanon did not have any scheduled mounts Friday and planned to resume riding Saturday.

As for Good Offense, he is a work in progress for McGee, who said the horse has always been a skittish 2-year-old. “He sees ghosts,” McGee quipped.

Already, the horse runs in blinkers, and more than likely will become more professional with racing experience.

Combs savors win from afar

When Bentley Combs wants to reflect on his first win as a trainer, he can look at the win photo of Ostentation from the third race at Churchill Downs on Thursday. He just won’t see himself in it.

No matter, he said. The race will always be etched in his memory. He watched it on his phone outside the stall of Breeders’ Cup Distaff entrant Forever Unbridled at Del Mar,

where Combs is this week an assistant to Dallas Stewart.

“People were looking at a me funny ‘cause I was screaming,” he said.

Being an assistant is the fulltime gig for Combs, though not for long. After returning to Kentucky following the Breeders’ Cup, he will fully pursue his training career, leaving the security of his position with Stewart and working to expand a stable of runners for the winter to take to Fair Grounds in New Orleans.

As of Friday morning, he had one horse, and it wasn’t even Ostentation anymore. That horse, whom he also owned, was claimed off him for $16,000, going to owner and trainer Shane Meyers, though Combs replaced him a couple of hours later by claiming the winner of the seventh race, Proud Dixie, for owner Jan Martin.

Combs, a 29-year-old Lexington, Ky., native, originally wanted to pursue a frontside job in horse racing. He attended the University of Louisville equine program for a while before graduating from Ole Miss. But his calling came on the backside, where he has been employed for five years by Stewart, beginning first as a hotwalker and groom before advancing to assistant trainer.

Mom’s On Strike sheds blinkers

Mom’s On Strike, the runnerup in last fall’s Pebbles Stakes at Belmont, is the morning-line favorite in Sunday’s featured ninth race at Churchill, a first-level $62,000 allowance at 1 1/16 miles on turf. She will race with blinkers off after she failed to pass the stretch leader in an off-the-grass race contested in the slop at Keeneland on Oct. 8. She finished second, beaten a neck. She is reunited with jockey Joe Rocco Jr., who rode her to her lone victory, which came in April 2016 at Oaklawn.

Defrock, Little Mizzy, and Tamit appear to be her principal challengers in a race that drew a full field of 12.