Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
DERBY WATCH Business time for Bolt d’Oro
The road to the Kentucky Derby for Bolt d’Oro has had a couple of detours, but on Saturday at Santa Anita he is scheduled to finally make his first start at age 3 in the San Felipe Stakes, and in a little more than 100 seconds, it will become evident if he’s still cruising in the fast lane.
Bolt d’Oro was one of the best 2-year-olds of 2017, with Grade 1 wins in the Del Mar Futurity and FrontRunner. His lone loss came in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, where a wide trip from an outside post cost him the Eclipse Award, which went to race winner Good Magic.
That was then. It’s been a tumultuous last few months to get to now.
Bolt d’Oro missed training time, causing him to miss his first intended start of the year in last month’s San Vicente, and his first few works after going back into training were not up to the standards he had displayed at 2. His owner and trainer, Mick Ruis, had a conflict with jockey Corey Nakatani and replaced him with Javier Castellano for the San Felipe.
His recent works, most notably a half-mile drill on Monday, have been far more encouraging. Bolt d’Oro comes into the San Felipe having fired off bestof-the-morning drills in three of his last four moves.
No horse has been more scrutinized at Santa Anita this winter than Bolt d’Oro. Ruis hears the chatter. He’s wants to ignore it. But he’ll see what’s posted online – questioning his colt’s preparation – and said he had people earlier this winter tell him to his face that they winced when they saw Bolt d’Oro gallop. He realizes the best way to silence all doubt is for Bolt d’Oro to perform as well as Bolt d’Oro can.
“It gets me a little nervous when I read what everybody says, but I feel good about where he’s at,” Ruis said Wednesday. “Training racehorses is tough. But it’s tough raising seven children, like Wendy and I did, and running many businesses. People should try doing that in the real world. Compared to that, this is easy.”
Ruis is a serial entrepreneur who hit for his biggest lick when he sold a scaffolding business. It enabled him to return full time to his passion, training racehorses, and to play at a high level since he had the financial wherewithal to purchase horses like Bolt d’Oro, who cost $630,000 as a yearling. His wife, Wendy, is at his side every morning during training hours, and a daughter, Shelbe, is his top assistant and a key part of the operation. The family loves racing.
But this is the first time Ruis has been in this position, with a top contender for the Kentucky Derby. He knows he’s under the microscope, even more so since Bolt d’Oro had a hiccup earlier this winter.
“He was lame behind, and we did a nuclear scan,” Ruis said. “They couldn’t find anything wrong. I had three vets look at him, and they all said, ‘He’s okay, just go on with him.’ He had a pulled muscle behind and probably was going through a growth spurt.”
Bolt d’Oro looked as though he was working through his issues when he first went back into training. He would take long jogs around the training track before heading to the main track for his works and gallops. The more he’s done, the better he’s appeared.
“Every work, we’ve pressed on him, been harder on him – he’s responded,” Ruis said.
Ruis has done some learning on the fly. He said he’s watched the way trainers like Bob Baffert and Jerry Hollendorfer, both Hall of Famers, handle their horses. And he’s sought the counsel of an old friend, trainer Eric Kruljac, whom Ruis first met at Turf Paradise years ago when Ruis’s son Mick Jr. was a jockey. For all of Bolt d’Oro’s recent works, Kruljac has been watching right alongside Ruis.
“I like talking to him,” Ruis said. “We can sit down later, have a drink, discuss things. I lean on Eric a lot.”
Ruis said he expects Bolt d’Oro to run well Saturday and to be the better for it in the San Anita Derby on April 7. That’s the direction the wheel is pointed. He’d like to avoid any more detours. In other Derby developments: ◗ Eclipse Award-winning jockey Jose Ortiz has picked up the mount on Risen Star runner-up Snapper Sinclair in the Louisiana Derby on March 24, trainer Steve Asmussen said Wednesday. Ortiz is at Fair Grounds that day for mounts in several major stakes. He replaces Adam Beschizza, who was aboard Snapper Sinclair for his last two starts, including a third-place finish in the Lecomte on Jan. 13.