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Steward’s Cup Juvenile Champion the Label and the Dilemma
Original article written by Keith Maidlow posted 11 years 2 weeks agoIf a player hangs around SIM Horse Racing long enough, that player will experience all of racing’s highs and lows, may want to stop playing the game and yet the lure of the fun and potential stardom forces the player to stay. When this happened to me, my solution was to back off in the number of horses I trained and number of races I ran. This respite allowed me to refresh, reflect and move forward again with as much quality in racers I could muster.
Sometimes one door closes and another opens. For example, Goodguywearsblack was pensioned this year and a short time laster, Godzuki wins the Steward’s Cup Juvenile giving me hope that this could be my new “big horse”.
Godzuki wasn’t my first Steward bred dirt router, there were others who made their way through the auction ring to my barn. These were classic distance routers who I would try getting an early start to the Triple Crown Series by running those short two year old route races, races that didn’t suit their breeding. As is with most “extended” routers who have the breeding to get distances greater than a mile and an eighth, my runners were never quite ready to show up for their two year old season at those mile and a sixteenth distances. Being a dirt sprinter trainer, all my dirt routers came from winning bids in the Steward’s auctions making them usually expensive but never the top few special horses in those sales. Also, many of the top trainers regularly produce homebreds that rival what the Steward has to offers. Needless to say, my guys consistently came up short, literally and figuratively once the Derby arrived.
Along comes Godzuki. The son of Highly Regarded out of the Chinese Bandit mare Steward’s Cup, who is bred to go a mile and a half and more. Highly Regarded’s wins in the Long Island Classic and Steward’s Cup Marathon along with Steward’s Cup (the mare) having six stakes win at distances greater than a mile and a quarter gave hope for a classic distance runner in Godzuki. In that auction my focus was always on Godzuki and all I had to do was put together the winning bid. As funds and luck would have it, my last bid of $2,518,000 was days before the end of the auction. When that price was eclipsed and nothing else interested me I decided there was no reason for being in attendance for the end. The morning after the auction completed I couldn’t figure out why my bankroll was only $200,000. It was then I realized Godzuki had found his way to my barn on an under bid that was about half the final bid.
In my mind, Godzuki’s works were just average for a stakes type horse and I just figured he needed more distance and would be a late bloomer. As we know now, he has won three races at 1 1/16th and one of them wound up being the Steward’s Cup Juvenile. How did this mile and a half colt accomplish this and what did it mean? It seems he accomplished what he did with grit and determination, but the only way to find out what it meant going forward was to look at the successes and failures of the SC Juvenile winners in the Triple Crown.
Previously, my only perception of how this group of horse ran in the Triple Crown was while picking my Triple Crown Trail horses. Although perception said they didn’t fair too well, each year I still had to pick the SC Juvy winner as part of my Trail selections.
There have been 18 years of SC Juvy winners since the new SIM came to be in SIM year 16, and there has been only one that went on to be a Triple Crown winner, Awake As I Am. There have been 54 TC races in that time, 40 races had the SC Juvy winner entered and none ran in 14 other races. There are only 8 total wins in Triple Crown races, 7 second place finishes, 4 thirds, and more than half, 21, where fourth or worse. None of the 18 has won another SC race of any kind (Awake As I Am retired undefeated after the Long Island Classic). Only Awake as I Am and Sword won the Derby, four won the Baltimore Crown and other than the TC winner only Literature won the LI Classic (after resting for the middle jewel). No other SC Juvy winner won more than one leg of the series. Desert Nomad ran a very respectable 2-1-2 and Sword ran 1-2-3.
If we look at breeding there were three legitimate milers who won the Steward’s Cup Juvy and didn’t show up very well in the four TC races they ran. Five others never won a race in their lifetime over 1 1/8th miles. The 18 SC winners ran three times the number of races at a distance less than or equal to a mile and an eighth versus the number of races greater than that distance. The longer distance race runners had a winning percentage of 30% while the shorter distances runners showed a win percentage of almost 65%. The group earned almost $50,000,000 during their careers as a group or about $2,800,000 per runner. So the SC Juvenile winners have been very successful as racers but not necessarily as successful in the Classics.
What did I learn from being a more than interested spectator of the Steward’s Cup Juvenile winner and how they faired in the Triple Crown? In general I learned that if my horse is bred to go long enough to win Classic races he probably won’t win the Juvy or if my horse wins the Juvy he probably doesn’t have the breeding to go the Classic distance. I hope I’ve learned that there are exceptions to that rule as shown by a few moderately successful Classic routers in the 18 winners. I saw, two very successful runners in Sword and Literature and, of course, there is the “big” guy, Awake As I Am, standing alone as the only TC winner.
Winning the Juvy tends to make ones prep race options easier. The simple thinking is to run something close, distance wise, to Louisville in week 3 or, more complex, if your star recovers quickly run something in weeks 2 and 4. Either option is followed by the Derby. Other than that, it’ll be lots of prayers, “resting on my laurels” for a few weeks and basking in the glow of a horse bred to go the distance but somehow snuck his way to a SC Juvenile win. Godzuki’s label is “Steward’s Cup Juvenile Winner” and “North American Champion Two Year Old Male”. His dilemma is the history of those who have gone before him, their successes and failures. My only hope is that he mirrors those who were successful and not those who failed the Triple Crown chase.