Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Servis, Zacney back in Preakness
When it comes to the Preakness, John Servis and Chuck Zacney have been there, done that – just not lately. Between them, they took down four of the six legs of the Triple Crown in 2004 and 2005.
Servis trained 2004 Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Smarty Jones on behalf of the Someday Farm of Roy and Pat Chapman. Zacney’s Cash Is King Stable owned Afleet Alex, who accounted for the following season’s Preakness and Belmont Stakes under the direction of trainer Tim Ritchey.
Three years ago, Servis and Zacney joined forces. On Saturday, when Diamond King starts at Pimlico in the 143rd Preakness, both will participate in a Triple Crown race for the first time since Smarty Jones and Afleet Alex were voted Eclipse Awards for their 3-year-old accomplishments.
“I was caught up in the Smarty Jones phenomena and that’s why I put the Cash Is King partnership together,” Zacney said. “Now we’ve come full circle.”
Smarty Jones and Afleet Alex were known commodities going into their Triple Crown runs. Although Diamond King is 4 for 6 – or 4 for 5 if you throw out the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club when he unseated jockey Frankie Pennington – he has not yet tested top company and will be bet accordingly.
Smarty Jones, a Pennsylvania-bred Cinderella horse, was 6 for 6 entering the Derby and went off favored in all three legs of the Triple Crown. He won the Derby by 2 3/4 lengths, the Preakness by 11 1/2, and was beaten a length at 1-5 in the Belmont while attempting to become the first Triple Crown winner in 26 years.
“Of course I’ve wondered if I would get back there,” Servis said of the Triple Crown races. “It’s just funny how things work out in this business.”
Afleet Alex, following an eight-length win in the Arkansas Derby, was sent off as the 9-2 second choice in Kentucky and was favored for his runaway Preakness and Belmont victories.
Afleet Alex took a brief lead in deep stretch of the Derby, but finished third, beaten a length. He rolled home by 4 3/4 lengths in the Preakness despite clipping the heels of Scrappy T and almost falling entering the stretch. He romped by seven lengths in the Belmont.
“Those races solidified Alex as a stallion,” Zacney said. “There had been some question about whether he was a twoturn horse, but the Preakness and Belmont wins put that to rest.”
Smarty Jones stands stud at Calumet Farm for a $7,500 fee. Afleet Alex’s services are available at Gainesway Farm for $8,500. Zacney said he “still keeps a few mares to breed to him.”
Servis and Zacney entered Diamond King in last weekend’s Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont Park but scratched in favor of the Preakness. Servis said they “talked it out at length” and he then left the decision where to race Diamond King to Zacney, who is majority owner of the Quality Road colt.
“I thought, it’s 13 years since I was there,” Zacney said. “I don’t know if I’ll ever get back again. The horse is on the upswing. Let’s roll the dice. Sometimes, you have to be a gambler.”
Zacney’s decision is understandable. His rapid rise to the top of the sport with Afleet Alex was followed by a string of lean years, when his horses were not running to expectations.
“After Alex I went into a bad cold spell,” Zacney said. “I would say from about 2009 to 2015, I spent big money on some big horses and they didn’t work out. I had cut back on my spending substantially. I was walking away for several years.”
Cathryn Sophia gave Zacney his mojo back. She was a $30,000 buy at the 2014 FasigTipton Midlantic fall yearling
sale in Timonium, Md., and Zacney sent her to Servis soon after they teamed up.
Servis said he had to back off on Cathryn Sophia’s early training several times because she “wasn’t the best-moving filly,” but once he got her to the races, she kept getting better and better.
She won her first four starts, including the Grade 2 Forward Gal and Grade 2 Davona Dale, but came up short in the Grade 1 Ashland at Keeneland, finishing third, beaten a half-length, as the 1-2 favorite.
Cathryn Sophia redeemed herself four weeks later by scoring her signature victory in the Kentucky Oaks.
“She came out of the Ashland so well, I was extremely confident going into the Oaks,” Servis said. “The way she breezed for the Oaks, it looked like she was going in 1:02 and she went in 59.”
In nine starts, Cathryn Sophia earned more than $1.2 million. Zacney sold her for $1.4 million at the 2016 Fasig-Tipton November sale.
“She put us back on the big stage,” he said.
Zacney purchased Diamond King for $235,000 at the 2017 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-yearolds in training sale. Glenn Bennett’s LC Racing came in as a partner and Diamond King was sent to Parx-based horseman Butch Reid.
“Butch played a key role in picking this horse out,” Zacney said. “We were on the same page with the same horse. Butch did a very good job with him.”
In the seven-furlong Heft Stakes on Dec. 30 at Laurel Park, Diamond King set the pace, was passed, and then re-rallied to win. The effort attracted several offers to buy. A deal to sell him to California interests was in the works, but fell apart.
“I wanted to stay in for a piece, but the buyers decided they wanted the whole horse,” Zacney said.
Servis reached out to one of his owners, Leonard Green, who races as D. J. Stable, and he bought in. The horse was transferred to Servis at the Palm Meadows Training Center in South Florida.
Diamond King finished third in the Grade 3 Swale soon after joining Servis’s stable. He was pointed to the Private Terms Stakes at Laurel in mid-March, and Servis was confident Diamond King was sitting on a breakout performance.
But a few days before the race, Diamond King spiked a fever. It wasn’t serious, and lasted only a few days, but the illness threw Diamond King’s spring campaign off schedule.
The timing left the Lexington at Keeneland or the Federico Tesio at Laurel as logical races. Zacney suggested the Tesio, and Diamond King stretched out in distance from seven furlongs to 1 1/8 miles off an 11-week layoff and won by three-quarters of a length.
“If he would have won the Private Terms, we might have gone to the Blue Grass with him,” Servis said.
Now, Diamond King will have to face Kentucky Derby winner and division leader Justify in his first start against top-flight horses.
“The horse is doing great and I think there’s a lot of upside in him,” Servis said. “The impressive thing about him to me is that he’s been winning and he’s one of those horses who if he gets the lead late, will ease up. He’s been doing just what he needs to do.”
Four-time Eclipse Awardwinning rider Javier Castellano will be aboard Diamond King on Saturday. Castellano won his second Preakness last year on Cloud Computing. He also won the race in 2006 with Bernardini.
Win or lose, Saturday will be a big day for Servis and Zacney, who estimates he will have 75 well-wishers on hand at Pimlico.
For Servis, who has been based at Parx since he began training in 1984, the hits just keep coming.
“For a kid from West Virginia, to have a horse like Smarty Jones or Cathryn Sophia, to be training a horse for the Derby or the Oaks, and then to win them, it’s amazing,” he said.