Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Ward comes out on top with chalk, bomb in graded stakes
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – After narrowly winning a graded stakes with a 1-5 shot on Friday and then beating a similarly priced, prohibitive favorite with a 17-1 chance in the Grade 1 Test the following afternoon, trainer Wesley Ward summed up his feelings in just three words: “It’s a dream,” Ward said on Sunday, after having sent out stable star Golden Pal to win the Grade 3 Troy here on Friday and Chi Town Lady to upset the seemingly unbeatable Matareya in the prestigious Test just 24 hours later.
“You know how it goes in this game, sometimes everything goes right like this did and at other times no matter what you do, things don’t go your way and you just can’t figure it out,” Ward said. “And when the good times come, like this, you’ve got to ride the wave as long as you can.”
Ward reported that Chi Town Lady, who rallied from nearly a dozen lengths off the lead, then had to survive a stewards’ inquiry before becoming the official winner of the Test, was doing “great” the following morning. The question now becomes what will be next for the newest Grade 1 winner in the barn.
“We gave her a long time between drinks before running her here, although we gave her a couple of stiff five-furlong works on the Oklahoma [training track] to get her ready for this race,” Ward noted. “The Breeders’ Cup will be on us before we know it, so if the owners will let me, I’d prefer to give her a little bit of a break now, then give her four or five stiff breezes over her home track” – Keeneland – “and lead her over there fresh and fit physically for the Breeders’ Cup.”
As for Golden Pal, Ward said he, too, was doing well exiting his hard-fought, come-frombehind head decision over the game pacesetter True Valour in the Troy.
“Our plan going into the race was to take him back, and it kind of helped our cause when the ground broke out from underneath him at the start,” Ward said. “He was a little keen down the backstretch until Irad [Ortiz Jr.] got him settled and from there I was pretty confident. When Julio [Garcia] works him, he always lets him get outworked early because he knows he’s on so much the best horse and mentally he was just reverting back to his workouts during the race.”
Ward said he’ll bring Golden Pal, winner of the 2021 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, back to his home base at Keeneland and likely put him on a path that could see him make his next start on dirt in the Grade 2 Phoenix, a Win and You’re In race for the BC Sprint.
“This is a great time of the year now at Keeneland, with only the bottom barns open for training because of the sales,” Ward explained. “I’ll pick the right days, when the main track has a lot of moisture in it and is nice and fast, and give him a couple of dirt breezes, see where we’re at, and move forward with him from there.”
Trainer Brad Cox said Matareya was a little tired but looking good the morning after her admittedly disappointing thirdplace finish in the Test, snapping a four-race winning streak that included a 6 1/4-length triumph in the Grade 1 Acorn in her previous start at Belmont Park.
“Like I said yesterday after the race, I didn’t like the way she was traveling over the wet and sealed track,” Cox said. “I figured after the break we’d have our option whether to be on the lead or sit right off it, but Flavien was kind of having to ask her to just be in contention up the backside and I just didn’t like what I was seeing from her at that point.”
Matareya also got carried out a bit by the pacesetting Hot Peppers from her inside and then slammed by the rallying winner on her outside near midstretch, although Cox said he didn’t feel the incident cost her a placing.
“She did get bounced around a little bit, but I don’t know if it affected her placing and Flavien didn’t think so, either, and he’d know best because he was on her,” Cox said. “I think she showed how good she is just by being in contention to the eighth pole. This can be a challenging place at times. Some horses just don’t like the track, especially when it’s wet and sealed like that and becomes tiring. The bottom line, we’ll probably just put a line through this race and move on, although at the moment I’m not sure exactly what we’re going to do with her moving forward.”