GULFSTREAM WEST Nicks enjoying euphoria of Caledonia Road’s success

MIAMI – Ralph Nicks learned what it was like to work with champions during his 13-year tenure as an assistant to trainer Bill Mott. Now it appears Nicks has a champion of his own, Caledonia Road, following her eye-catching victory at Del Mar in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies.

Caledonia Road, whom Nicks picked out for owner Luke Paiement’s Zoom and Fish Stable as a yearling for a bargain $140,000 at the Keeneland September sale, likely sewed up division honors with her 3 1/2-length triumph under Nicks’s longtime friend Mike Smith in the Juvenile Fillies. The performance came on the heels of her second-place finish four weeks earlier at Belmont Park in the Grade 1 Frizette.

Earlier in the season, Nicks swept all three legs of the open division of the Florida Sire Stakes series with Soutache and Phantom Ro.

“The whole year has been kind of surreal, to win the Sire series with the two colts and now a Breeders’ Cup,” said Nicks, a former assistant to Bill Mott.

“I’ve been blessed my whole career. To have had the opportunity to spend all those years and throw my leg over some really great horses, champions like Cigar and Paradise Creek, while working for and learning from a horseman like Bill, and the turnaround my own career has taken from where I was at five years ago until now, it’s unbelievable, and very emotional for me. Thinking about it still kind of gives me goose bumps.”

Nicks said he could see the steady improvement in Caledonia Road from mid-summer, culminating with her performance in the Juvenile Fillies.

“The way she came around going into Saratoga, moved forward in the Frizette to being as dominant as she was in the Breeders’ Cup was amazing,” Nicks said.

“She really moved forward in the first two weeks after the Frizette, enough to make me go into the Juvenile Fillies with some real confidence. I mean, you never go into a Breeders’ Cup race thinking you might actually win, but I was really expecting a big effort. And on the second turn, I looked up and thought the way she was moving by horses as easily as she was, out in the middle of the track like that, she looked like a good old top-class mare just galloping around in a 2-year-old race.

“In the Frizette, she started her move at the half-mile pole and kind of flattened out a bit at the end. This time, Mike started her an eighth of a mile later. And she’s such a big, rangy horse, going two turns really helped her quite a bit as well.”

Nicks also admitted he was just as proud for having helped pick out Caledonia Road at the sale as having trained her to a likely championship.

“We went to the sales looking for classic kind of horses,” Nicks said. “Luke does the catalog and pedigree work, gives me the ones he likes, and after that turns me loose on them. And hopefully winning a Breeders’ Cup race, and being able to say we’ve trained a champion, will prove we can do more than just win some baby races around here, and open up some new avenues for the barn down the road.”

Nicks said the Kentucky Oaks is obviously his next major goal for Caledonia Road.

“We’ll work backwards from the Oaks plotting out her schedule,” Nicks said. “Ideally I’d like to have the Oaks be her third start next year. We’ll nominate her to stakes at Gulfstream, Tampa and Fair Grounds, see what surfaces are playing to our liking, and go from there. I am from the school where I probably will look to start her right out at a mile and one-sixteenth, not back her up in distance to begin the year.”

Nicks added another stakes winner to his résumé when Wildcat’s Legacy rallied to an easy triumph in the Juvenile Sprint on Saturday’s Sunshine Millions Preview card at Gulfstream Park West.

“I’ve had two other very talented horses who weren’t very sound out of that same mare,” Nicks said. “Fortunately he’s sound, very smart, and because he’s so tactical I think he might be able to get up to a mile because he doesn’t have to be on the pace. In the long term, I’d love for him to be able to compete against open company and try to get him to races like the Swale. It sure would be fun having two top 3-year-olds like him and her around here this winter and spring.”

Speed duel between favorites?

Roses in the South, the only multiple winner in the field, and Crazy Sofia, an impressive maiden winner last month, will likely vie for favoritism in an optional $75,000 claimer at Gulfstream Park West for 2-year-old fillies at five furlongs on the turf.

Roses in the South led from start to finish, increasing her advantage to more than six lengths to defeat slightly lesser competition just two weeks ago. Crazy Sofia used similar tactics to graduate by six lengths Oct. 7.

A potential speed battle between the two favorites could enhance the chances of recent graduate L. A. House or Little Bridge, who won her maiden from off the pace over the main track in her debut during the summer at Gulfstream Park.