Fast Start For Local Trainers

HENDERSON, Ky. (July 9, 2016) — Horse owner-breeder Bobby Hunt had wanted to run Betrothal and Runaway Betty on the same day last year at Ellis Park. But the 2-year-old Runaway Betty hadn’t progressed far enough to make her first start.

Making this highly unusual is that Runaway Betty is Betrothal’s only foal.

But instead Hunt, a prominent Lexington equine surgeon, had to settle for mom and daughter winning at Ellis 51 weeks apart. Betrothal, off a four-year layoff at age 8, won last July 18 in a $4,000 claiming race for horses who hadn’t won in a year – a condition for which she qualified with three years spare. Fast forward to Friday’s Ellis card, and the now 3-year-old Runaway Betty won her debut by a head at 10-1 odds in a $38,000 maiden race for Hunt and his brother, Don, who trains the horses.

“She had a tendon injury when she was 4, so I retired her from racing,” Bobby Hunt said of Betrothal. “She was a real nice little race mare. I bred her when she was 6 and had this foal. She was out in the back 40, turned out with the cattle, just turning 8. I felt sorry for her because she was bored, covered in ice when we had the ice storm.

“So I brought her back up and we started riding her, because she was always a pretty mover, and I thought we’d make a show horse out of her. She picked up the bit a little too aggressively for that, so we said, ‘Heck, let’s try to train her some more.’ She kind of went through her paces in training. My goal last year was to run the 2-year-old and her mother on the same day. But Betty wasn’t far enough along and I decided to hold back and run her as a 3-year-old. We just wanted to give Betrothal one last hurrah.”

Betrothal was a won-and-done, going back into retirement and quite happy this go-round running around a field with broodmares. “I’ll breed her next year,” Hunt said. “I just breed them every couple of years. It’s just a golf game to me, a recreational thing.”

Meanwhile, the Hunts have high hopes for Runaway Betty, whom they think ultimately will be a two-turn grass horse.

“She’s very professional, has a real Quarter-Horse mind to her, everyone in the family does,” Bobby Hunt said. “Just very studious, a good solid, strong horse who from Day One knew what she was supposed to do instinctively.”

Fast start for local trainers

Runaway Betty was one of six locally-trained horses to win in the meet’s first three days, with Kelly Ackerman taking Friday’s first race with Ghostly Again ($15 to win). Jerry Greenwell (Emmett’s Dream) and Benjie Larue (Our Adieu) won last Sunday, with John Hancock (Elona) and Don Campbell (Virginia Walls) scoring on the July 2 opening card.

Hancock, a third-generation trainer at Ellis Park, estimates that 70 percent of the horses racing here ship in from other tracks or training centers. He publicly predicted the locals would do well this meet, and then won the very first race.

“The locals, they may not win the money races,” Hancock said. “But if you come in here with some horses with conditions, medium-range horses and cheap maidens, the locals will do more than hold their own. And this number will go up.”

Greenwell, who has been training close to 40 years and is part of a big farming family in the region, has four horses, all of whom he owns. He lives 22 miles away in Union County, Ky., and points toward Ellis every summer. Emmett’s Dream was one of two horses that Greenwell claimed at Churchill Downs in preparation for this meet.

“Winning is a big deal whether you have six horses or one,” he said. “Losing comes pretty frequent and winning doesn’t happen every often. I farmed and then I got to fooling with these horses and I quit farming and rented my farm out. This is home. That’s why I claimed those horses at Churchill, to run here.”

Churchill Downs Racing Club makes road trip

Gary Palmisano, Churchill Downs’ VIP player-services manager, expects between 100 and 150 people to be at Ellis Park to watch the 2-year-old colt Warrior’s Club run for the second time in Sunday’s seventh race. The son of Warrior’s Reward was the first horse to start for the Churchill Downs Racing Club, with 200 people putting up $500 apiece for the experience of having part-ownership in a racehorse.

The Churchill Downs Racing Club is a marketing concept pioneered by Emerald Downs in Washington State. Churchill Downs Inc. executive director of racing Mike Ziegler knew a good idea when he heard it a racing symposium, and the program was instituted at Churchill and its sister track, Arlington Park. Ownership in Warrior’s Club filled up so quickly that a second 2-year-old, the filly Dial Me, was purchased by another 200 people. Both horses were picked out and trained by Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas. The investors do not receive training or expense bills, those paid with their upfront money. Palmisano said a decision on what to do with the horses will be made when the money is close to running out.

Both horses were fifth at Churchill Downs in their first start. Palmisano expects some of the owners in Dial Me to part of the group Sunday.

“Both groups have taken a liking to each other’s horse,” he said. “There’s a ton of camaraderie. So yes, this is the Group 1 horse, but there quite a few of Group 2 folks who will be coming along. And obviously they have spouses and kids and everybody who tags along. We’ll have quite a contingency.”

Palmisano said about two-thirds of the partners are from Kentucky. “But after that, 30 other states are represented, including Hawaii and Maine and a couple of people from Canada,” he said. “Which is pretty cool.”

Warrior’s Club is the tepid 7-2 favorite in the field of nine, but probably will be a shorter prize, judging on how Dial Me and he were bet in their debuts.

“I think we have a pretty big shot,” Palmisano said. “I imagine that if the Brendan Walsh and Steve Asmussen (first-time starters) were really, really live, they would have run the last weekend at Churchill. I’m anticipating those probably being second- or third-stringers. If that’s the case, our horse, with a race under his belt and picking up (the anti-bleeder medication) Lasix for the first time, probably will be tough to beat.”

Geary, Johnsen can resume racing horses at their tracks

One byproduct of the Churchill Downs Racing Club is the fact that Ellis racetrack owner Ron Geary and Kentucky Downs’ co-owner Corey Johnsen can race their horses at their tracks. The past few years, thoroughbred racetrack owners in Kentucky could not run at their tracks, though that did not apply to stock-holders or board of directors at Churchill and Keeneland.

Kentucky Horse Racing Commission executive editor Marc Guilfoil said that Rick Hiles, the trainer who also is president of the Kentucky division of the Horsemen’s Benevolent & Protective Association, asked that the policy – established under a former regulatory regime – be revisited, given that a horse so closely aligned with Churchill Downs ran there.

Guilfoil said he asked the stewards if they had any problem with changing the policy back to let owners run at their tracks, as is common in other states. “They said they didn’t have any problem with it,” he said. “If the stewards had a problem, we wouldn’t do it.”

While Hiles trains for Geary, the Ellis owner said he wasn’t pushing the change. Still, he’s delighted to be able to run again here.

“When I bought Ellis 10 years ago, I had maybe three to six horses in any one year, and I thought it would be fun to race here,” Geary said. “And the first four or five years I did, and it was truly fun. I had some of my better horses then, which made it even better. But apparently the rule changed with what they’re doing at Churchill Downs, so it appears Corey and I will be able to run at our tracks. Quite frankly, I’m very excited about it. I only have two horses, and one is a filly, ($110,462-earner) Northern Connect, that is growing and developing, so I’m excited about her.”

Geary also has Northern Connect’s unraced 4-year-old brother by 2000 Kentucky Derby winner Fusaichi Pegasus, named Connect A Peg, stabled at Ellis with trainer Wayne French.