Train the Trainer has been a quick study in his short career, coming out of a key maiden race to win his next two starts, including the Mike Lee Stakes at Saratoga.
“I’ve learned you just have to stay out of his way and let him do his thing. He’s very appropriately named,” joked trainer Rob Atras, who took over care of the gelding this spring.
Train the Trainer rolls into Monday’s $150,000 New York Derby at Finger Lakes as the only stakes winner in a field of five for one of the biggest races of the season at the Farmington, N.Y., track. It is joined on the card by its sister race, the $75,000 New York Oaks, which also has drawn a field of five 3-year-olds, and the $50,000 Leon Reed Memorial, with a large field of 10 statebred sprinters. The nine-race card also includes legs of four claiming series for the local bread-and-butter runners, plus two allowance races.
In his debut at Santa Anita for trainer Mark Glatt, Train the Trainer finished second. The winner, Goal Oriented, was later a troubled fourth in the Preakness. Train the Trainer’s ownership, Alipony Racing and Saints or Sinners, elected to send the New York-bred to a New York-based trainer to compete on that lucrative circuit.
In his first start for Atras, the gelding won his maiden by five lengths against older statebreds. In the seven-furlong Mike Lee for statebred sophomores, Train the Trainer broke sharply and led throughout, drawing clear by 2 3/4 lengths at the wire with Irad Ortiz Jr. hand-riding through the final yards.
Ortiz is in to ride on a dark day at Saratoga, and Train the Trainer has drawn the rail as he goes two turns for the first time. His pedigree suggests he might handle the added distance. His sire, Dialed In, fathered two-turn Grade 1 winners Defunded and Super Stock, as well as the consistent Gunnevera. Dam Heavenly Vision was only a sprint winner, but several of her foals won beyond a mile, including High Promise, a winner up to 11 furlongs. Additionally, this is the immediate family of champion Fierceness and Grade 1 winner Outwork.
Atras believes Train the Trainer is tractable enough to ration his natural speed.
“I’m not sure he needs to be on the front end – in the mornings, he sits off,” Atras said. “He’s just a racehorse. He’s a little immature still. You can just tell with his personality, but he knows when to turn it on.”
While Train the Trainer is the only stakes winner in this field, he doesn’t tower over his opponents based on Beyer Speed Figures. His best is the 85 he earned in his maiden win, and he posted an 84 in his other two starts. Buttah, Hit the Post, and Calling Card share the top number of an 87. Additionally, Buttah and Calling Card are both winners at a mile heading into this 1 1/16-mile tilt. Buttah was stakes-placed last year, while Calling Card is coming off a well-beaten fourth-place finish in the Mike Lee.
Hit the Post earned his 87 for a Saratoga maiden win last out and also will be going beyond seven furlongs for the first time. He is the most likely candidate to give Train the Trainer company on the lead.
King’s Leap has stakes form at Finger Lakes and has won around two turns here, but he will need to improve his figures.
New York Oaks
Vehemente also will have to answer the distance question in the New York Oaks. The filly makes her stakes debut off a seven-furlong allowance win at Saratoga.
Jockey Kendrick Carmouche “has said, ‘The further, the better. She’s got an extra furlong or two in her,’ ” trainer Joe Sharp told the Finger Lakes press office. “The only unknown is the distance, but the way she trains and gallops out, we have a lot of confidence in her.”
Mischief Lady, also running beyond seven furlongs for the first time, is the lone stakes winner in the field, having notched a front-running win in the off-the-turf New York Stallion Series Cupecoy’s Joy last out. Valtellina, stakes-placed last fall, is an allowance winner at a mile, while Lottie Margaret was second in the Maddie May at a mile earlier this year.
Leon Reed Memorial
Rounding out the action is the Leon Reed Memorial, in which local stakes winner Jak N Burny looks to keep rolling off a front-running win in his season debut.
In that June 11 race, he defeated fellow Reed Memorial entrants Tacony Road and Lady’s Golden Guy. Tacony Road won this year’s George Barker, while Lady’s Golden Guy won the 2021 and 2022 editions of the Reed Memorial. Rotknee, the defending winner of this race, also is in Monday’s field.
The Reed Memorial is named for assistant starter Leon Reed, who, 20 years ago this November, died at 47 following injuries sustained in a gate accident. Reed had been working at Finger Lakes for more than two decades.
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