In an earthquake of an upset, Magnitude rumbled home a blowout winner of the Risen Star Stakes on Saturday at Fair Grounds.
It’s not just that Magnitude scored at boxcar odds of 43-1. He rolled to a 9 1/4-length victory, beating 11 rivals while increasing his lead from the eighth pole to the wire after setting a hot pace.
All this after breaking from post 12 under a new rider, Ben Curtis, who let Magnitude fire out of the gate and onto the lead. Despite his wide draw, Magnitude had found the rail and the lead well before hitting the first turn.
Built made a mild run at the winner coming off the far turn, but fizzled before the furlong grounds and failed to hold second, passed on the wire by another 43-1 shot, Chunk of Gold. The $1 exacta paid $1,314.70. Magnitude, who earned a 108 Beyer Speed Figure for his effort, knocked the whole race upside down.
“Ben took the initiative and was very positive with what he wanted to do, and the horse responded to him,” said Steve Asmussen, who trains Magnitude for Winchell Thoroughbreds.
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Asmussen won a maiden route race earlier on the card with a colt named Yinzer, who set a fast pace and never stopped. He saw the racing surface Saturday as biased and suggested to Curtis that he get to the rail as soon as possible.
“The instructions were limited: Let the horse do what he does and get forward,” Curtis said.
While forwardly placed horses won all the dirt races Saturday, and the inside part of the track might have been superior, this was no all-out speed bias. And while the track played quick, it wasn’t outrageously so, and Magnitude’s time of 1:48.85 was the fastest Risen Star since the race was extended to 1 1/8 miles in 2020. The only other nine-furlong Risen Star winner to crack 1:50 was Epicenter, who clocked 1:49.03 in 2022. Magnitude’s raw time would even have been on the quick side for Fair Grounds’ most important dirt route for older horses, the Grade 2 New Orleans Classic.
Epicenter also campaigned for Winchell and Asmussen, but he won the Risen Star at 7-2. While Asmussen held Magnitude in high regard as a 2-year-old, the colt, by Not This Time out of Rockadelic, by Bernardini, finished seventh in the Iroquois Stakes last fall, his stakes debut, then was a well-beaten second behind Built in the Gun Runner on Dec. 21, and sixth on Jan. 18 in the Lecomte. Saturday marked the first time he made an early lead since a seven-furlong maiden win at Ellis Park last summer.
“The horse has not missed a single day or a single oat. Scott has done a tremendous job with him,” said Asmussen, referring to his longtime assistant Scott Blasi, who oversees day-to-day operation of Asmussen’s Fair Grounds string.
Almost as surprising as Magnitude's powerful performance was East Avenue’s poor showing. East Avenue stumbled badly at the start when favored in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile last fall, but bettors forgave that ninth-place finish and made East Avenue the 4-5 Risen Star favorite in his 3-year-old debut. East Avenue broke alertly and stalked the pace from second, but began losing ground at the five-sixteenths pole, on the end of the far turn, and beat a steady retreat from there, finishing in a dead heat for 10th.
Chunk of Gold, who had turned in two encouraging performances over the Tapeta surface at Turfway Park, raced from mid-pack and rallied up the fence to nab second from a tiring Built. Vassimo, making his stakes debut, stalked the pace and held a distant fourth, 2 3/4 lengths out of third and a half-length in front of fifth-place American Promise, who broke poorly for the second time in a row.
Those five all earned qualifying points toward the Kentucky Derby, and the 50 for Magnitude are sufficient to earn him one of the 20 starting slots in the Derby.
Magnitude ($88.40) proved capable of sustaining a wicked pace for 1 1/8 miles, going 23.42 for his first quarter-mile, then 23.52 for his second, and a half-mile in 46.92. Magnitude had little trouble turning back Built, changing leads on cue at the quarter pole, swapping back to his “wrong” lead for part of the stretch run, then getting back on his proper lead to finish things off, galloping out like he was ready for more.
“He pulled away very well in the stretch and hit the line hard,” Curtis said. “Whenever you ride for Steve Asmussen, you always know you’re going to have a shot.”
Curtis has been based mainly in his native England for most of his career as a jockey, coming to America for the 2023-24 Fair Grounds meeting, and picking up the mount on Honor Marie, whom he rode to an eighth-place finish in the Derby.
Asmussen, a Hall of Famer, still seeks his first Derby win. Epicenter came closest among his Derby starters, run down at the wire by the improbable winner Rich Strike. This Risen Star winner, Magnitude, came out of nowhere. It will be fascinating to see where he goes from here.
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