Former rivals now teammates

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Twenty-five years ago, Colonial Affair, owned by Centennial Farms, held off a hard-charging Devil His Due, trained by H. Allen Jerkens, to win the Grade 1 Whitney Handicap by a nose. The result left Don Little Jr. and Jimmy Jerkens with differing emotions and memories.

Little’s father founded Centennial Farms. The younger Little, then 34 years old, remembered that his father couldn’t be at Saratoga for the Whitney as he was in Switzerland for a work conference. Little remembers accepting the trophy from Marylou Whitney then heading a few miles away to play a polo match, the Whitney Cup.

“We won that, too,” Little recalled. “It was a good day.”

Jimmy Jerkens, then 35 years old and an assistant to his father, was back at Belmont Park as there were only two days left in the Saratoga meet when that year’s Whitney was run. He remembered that Devil His Due was equipped with a smaller shadow roll than usual. Jerkens let the person responsible for that hear about it.

“My father always put big shadow rolls on in those days and [Devil His Due] had a small one and I thought that got him beat,” Jerkens said. “We had an assistant named Artie Amaya at the time. I called him up and cursed him out like a dog.”

Saturday, when the 92nd Whitney is run, Little, the president of Centennial, and Jerkens, now in his 22nd year of training, will be on the same side, trying to win the $1 million race with Preservationist.

Preservationist, a 6-year-old son of Arch, will be making only his ninth career start in the Whitney. Typically, most horses his age capable of competing at this level are already off the track at stud or their connections having given up the dream of Grade 1 glory. Yes, Imperative is running in Saturday’s Whitney at age 9, but he’s a gelding and appears way past his prime.

Since Kelso won the Whitney at age 8 in 1965, only three horses older than 5 – Fio Rito (age 6 in 1981), Commentator (age 7 in 2008) and Tizway (age 6 In 2011) – have won the Whitney.

Preservationist debuted on June 10, 2016, finishing second in a maiden race at Belmont Park. He did not make it back to the races until 18 months later when he finished third in a maiden race at Aqueduct. In between, there were 23 published workouts, with no works recorded for a period of three months in the summer/fall of 2016 and seven months between March and October 2017.

“He had some foot bruising, some muscle soreness. Nuclear scans were negative,” Little said. “He had some inflammation here and there but nothing ever majorly wrong. Being a big, athletic horse, he had to take a certain amount of training to be race ready, and his physical skeleton structure wasn’t mature enough to handle the workload to be successful the way we knew he could.”

Early in 2018, Preservationist won a maiden race and a first-level allowance and he seemed on his way. That spring, however, Preservationist experienced tightness and inflammation in his back.

When Preservationist returned to the work tab in the fall of 2018 it was pretty clear that another setback would likely be the end. In January, Preservationist finished third in a second-level allowance, then won at that same condition in February. There was a quarter crack to deal with after that, but he was back to the races by May and won a third-level allowance at Belmont.

Preservationist finally made his stakes debut in the Grade 2 Suburban at Belmont, where he was the second choice behind Catholic Boy, the 2018 Travers Stakes winner who was coming off a sharp seasonal debut victory on the turf.

Preservationist broke on top but then conceded the lead to a pumped up Catholic Boy. At the quarter pole, Junior Alvarado guided Preservationist through the inside and he ran off away to a 4 1/4-length victory over Catholic Boy. He earned a 108 Beyer.

“I thought it was one of the most impressive races live I’ve seen in quite some time,” Little said.

For all involved, this will be a memorable Whitney as it will be the first since the death of Marylou Whitney, who followed her husband Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney into the racing business and who played an integral role in transforming this track and this town.

Little has a connection to Marylou Whitney in that his great uncle Norman Vaughan provided sled dogs that Marylou rode behind at her wedding. In 1995, Vaughan and Marylou Whitney led a six-person expedition to the South Pole.

To Little, it would be only fitting if Preservationist won the Whitney.

“The name sort of fits. We can preserve the legacy of Centennial wining the Whitney and accepting the trophy from Marylou 25 years ago,” he said.

BARBARA D. LIVINGSTON Preservationist, a lightly raced 6-year-old, is just now beginning to live up to his potential.