Wesley Ward won an Eclipse Award as champion apprentice jockey in 1984. His riding career, owing to his size, ended in 1989. Ward was all of 21. Perhaps this relates to Ward’s affinity for jockeys riding into the twilight of their career. He hires them as valued work riders, and, periodically, will start giving actual mounts to some journeyman just trying to hang on.
At 53, Victor Espinoza is only a handful of years younger than Ward. He won the Triple Crown on American Pharoah, but through the last three calendar years, Espinoza, before Saturday, had won 28 races. Ward, seemingly out of nowhere, started giving Espinoza business in late June.
These aren’t just throwaway mounts. On Saturday at Monmouth Park, Espinoza rode Running Away to victory in the Grade 3, $250,000 Monmouth Oaks, an important win for a homebred filly with pedigree. Ward said earlier this week he chose this spot for Running Away because she’s owned by her breeder, Stud TNT, and had yet to win or place in a graded race.
Running Away came to Monmouth from Keeneland with two listed stakes wins, front-running scores in the Busanda at Aqueduct and the Horseshoe Indianapolis at … Horseshoe Indianapolis. Ward figured Espinoza would ride Running Away like the jockeys who had won those stakes. He figured wrong. Espinoza sat second and let surprise leader Paris Lily make the pace. Running Away, traveling sweetly from the start, in the bridle and totally relaxed, tackled Paris Lily on the far turn, easily took her measure, and had plenty left to hold clear 6-5 favorite Fondly, winning by 1 1/4 lengths.
“I really don’t give these type of riders instructions,” Ward told Monmouth publicity. “I’ll tell them about the horse, but not about how the race might play out because they get things in their minds and I’d rather they just do what they feel is necessary. Watching the race, as a jockey I might have ridden it differently and I might not have had the same outcome, because I’d have probably just went.”
The top two proved much the best, Paris Lily hanging around for third, 2 1/2 lengths out of second. Running Away, who beat six rivals, clocked 1:46.26 for 1 1/16 miles on a fast track and paid a generous $11.40 as a distant third choice behind Paris Lily.
Running Away is by Gun Runner and out of the Unbridled’s Song mare Allez Marie. Her second dam, Summerly, went wire to wire in the 2005 Kentucky Oaks. Summerly’s granddaughter, in style and substance, is cut from similar cloth.
“She’s not my normal type of horse,” Ward said. “She’s a big, long, lanky filly, and when she breezes, she breezes fast. She just goes. From day one when we started working her, she just goes.”
The Monmouth Oaks mount went to Victor Espinoza. On Saturday morning, Espinoza had won four races all year. Late Saturday afternoon, Wesley Ward put him on a graded-stakes winner.
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