Creator seeks OaklawnSaratoga double Saturday
BOB WISENER
The comparisons between Creator and the last horse to sweep the Arkansas Derby and Travers are compelling enough to make one want to bet.
Creator bids to become the first to win Oaklawn Park and Saratoga’s biggest races in the same year since Temperence Hill in 1980. Preakness winner Exaggerator is the early 3-1 favorite in a 14-horse field Saturday, the Curlin colt seeking his fourth Grade 1 victory of the year over a track he won a Grade 2 race last season. Creator and Destin, one-two in the Belmont Stakes, provide strong competition along with three horses from leading Saratoga trainer Chad Brown and two trained by Hall of Famer Bob Baffert.
Creator and Gun Runner represent newly minted Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen, a seven-time Oaklawn champion who in April won his third Arkansas Derby.
So far, Creator’s 3-year-old season is almost a mirror image to that of Temperence Hill, winning a maiden race at Oaklawn and then the Arkansas Derby and Belmont Stakes. Temperence Hill, owned by Arkansas lumberman John Ed Anthony and trained by Joe Cantey, went on to capture the 3-year-old male championship and won the Oaklawn Handicap the following year. T-Hill, as he was called, did not race in either the Kentucky Derby (won by the filly Genuine Risk) or the Preakness (Codex, the first Triple Crown victory for trainer Wayne Lukas).
Creator enters the Travers exactly six months after his maiden victory at Oaklawn by 7 1/4 lengths going a mile and a sixteenth. That followed five defeats at three tracks for the Tapit colt, owned by WinStar Farm LLC and purchased for $440,000 at the September 2014 Keeneland yearling sale in Lexington, Ky. (Celebrity chef Bobby Flay bought an interest in Creator before the Belmont Stakes.)
A confirmed stretch runner, Creator made a last-to-first move in the Arkansas Derby, beating Suddenbreakingnews by 1 1/4 lengths at a mile and an eighth with Oaklawn leader Ricardo Santana Jr. aboard. Thirteenth in the Kentucky Derby, Creator won the Belmont from outside post 13 by a nose over Destin at a mile and a half with New York-based Irad Ortiz Jr. riding the colt for the first time. Ortiz keeps the mount in the Travers, breaking from post 12 and hoping for a better performance after Creator’s sixthplace finish in Saratoga’s Grade 2 $600,000 Jim Dandy July 30.
“The good news is that the Jim Dandy wasn’t Creator’s major target, but we were expecting it to be better,” Asmussen said. “I don’t think (the Jim Dandy) did anything for him. I just think he’s trained very sharp since. I think there should be a more favorable setup for him this time in this competitive of a field than there was in the Jim Dandy.”
Gun Runner, third in the Kentucky Derby, comes off a fifth-place finish behind Exaggerator in Monmouth Park’s Grade 1 Haskell Invitational