By Dick Jerardi
If you had scripted the 2024 Cotillion and Pennsylvania Derby in a way that would please the most people and provide high drama, you would have written it precisely as it happened.
After a whatever-could-go-wrong-did-go-wrong trip, the amazing filly Thorpedo Anna found a seam at the top of the stretch in the Cotillion and relentlessly pursued 44-1 Gun Song until she finally caught up in the final 100 yards and eased past to win by a neck. Jockey Brian Hernandez never used his whip, but this was not at all easy for a horse that went off at 1-10 after taking $360,576 out of $514,444 in the win pool. Bottom line, a happy ending for the ownership group, trainer Kenny McPeek and the fans that crowded Parx for nearly 8 hours of racing on Saturday.
If the most exciting and popular horse winning was not enough, how about the next act being everybody’s favorite great uncle/grandfather winning his second Pa. Derby with the Preakness winner? D. Wayne Lukas turned 89 on Labor Day. He just bought 17 yearlings at Keeneland and will never stop pursuing the next big horse. This big horse, this Seize the Grey, off at 4-1, led from the start in the Pa. Derby, cruised through slow fractions and ran away from second place Stronghold in the stretch to win by 3 3/4 lengths, with jockey Jaime Torres, a Parx regular last year, screaming out the perfect words on the jockey cam audio as he celebrated when the pair crossed the wire: “good boy, good boy.”
McPeek said he really did not train Thorpedo Anna that hard for the Cotillion, so certain was he of victory. And why not? He had beaten most of the top competitors over and over again and none of the races was close.
But, as it turned out, the brilliant jockey John Velazquez on Gun Song had a smart plan which he executed perfectly. Mystic Lake went to the front as expected. Johnny V and Gun Song kept Hernandez and Thorpedo Anna to their inside so they could not get a clear run outside the frontrunner. The top three stayed that way until the far turn, Hernandez hoping for a way out, Velazquez hoping not to give it to him.
Enter Flavien Prat on Tarifa, ranging outside Thorpedo Anna, trying to keep her boxed in. But he did not have quite enough horse to do it when the horses bended into the homestretch and Hernandez found the daylight he had been denied. When Thorpedo Anna got that chance, she lengthened her stride and did what champions do.
Gun Song did everything but win. And it would have been a huge payday for owner R. Lee Lewis and trainer Mark Hennig as they would have each gotten a $50,000 bonus as the winner of the Cathryn Sophia and Cotillion in addition to the trainer’s $58,650 share of the owner’s $586,500 first prize. Alas, the best horse won as she has done in every start this year, with the exception of her neck defeat in an incredible effort against males in the Travers.
McPeek said Thorpedo Anna would be pointed to the Nov. 2 Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Del Mar. If she wins and none of the top 3-year-old males (Fierceness, Seize the Grey, Dornoch) wins the BC Classic, she will almost certainly be named Horse of the Year.
The trainer promised the filly would be at her very best for her final race of 2024. And she will need to be. She has won the Kentucky Oaks, the Acorn, the CCA Oaks and now the Cotillion, Grade I races all. But the Distaff will be her first start against older horses in a field that may include defending 2023 Distaff winner and division champion Idiomatic and the brilliant Adare Manor. Might be the Race of the Day.
For his part, Lukas said he was leaning toward the BC Dirt Mile for Seize the Grey, but did not rule out the Classic. Lukas has had hundreds of owners in his half century career with thoroughbreds that began in 1974, the same year Keystone/Philadelphia Park/Parx opened for business. He has never had 2,570 owners for one horse as he does with the My Racehorse Stable and Seize the Grey. All the “owners’’ had to go on the track to get their pictures taken, the winner’s circle not close to large enough.
Lukas and the owners each got a $50,000 participation bonus as the Preakness winner in addition to their shares of the $546,000 first prize. But the “owners’’ did not seem to care much about that as they chanted “Seize the Grey, Seize the Grey’’ on their way to the track like they were storming a football field after their team won the big game.
Lukas said his horse just did not care for Saratoga where he ran poorly in the Belmont Stakes and Jim Dandy, said he would duplicate his Preakness form in the Pa. Derby. And the horse racing sage was right again, as the son of Arrogate controlled the race from the start, his only real challenge coming from Stronghold who was just down the shedrow from him in Lou Linder’s Barn 14. That challenge did not last long, Lukas, who will be 90 when next year’s Pa. Derby is run, having won another in an endless supply of big ones.
There were 114 horses which ran on the 14-race card that began at 11:39 p.m. and ended at 7:20 p.m. The handle was $16,007,617, shy of the track record, but still a wonderful number when you consider how far this day has come in a decade.
Is there a cooler horse out there than Next? The Greenwood Cup featured the last three winners of the race – Next (2023). Ridin With Biden (2022) and Magic Michael (2021). In reality, it was a one-horse race and everybody knew it, including the players who bet $174,837 out of $222,021 in the win pool on 1-20 Next. The only drama when Next runs is the margin of victory. Last year, it was 25 lengths. This year, it was a mere 10 over Magic Michael with Ridin With Biden fading badly after setting the pace with Next menacingly lapped outside of him for the first mile of the mile and a half marathon.
Next has won his last six starts by a combined 90 lengths. He ran his final quarter mile Saturday in 24.58 seconds which should be impossible in such a long race. For Next, in these really long dirt races, nothing apparently is impossible.
So what’s next for Next? Trainer Doug Cowans said they are going to take a look at the BC Turf, as the pace of the Classic would be too quick and there is no longer a marathon BC dirt race or even one on the weekend. The Turf is the right distance (mile and a half), but the top Euros can kick with Next and it’s unclear if his form will be the same on grass. Whatever is next, Next is an absolute joy to watch, and it would be wonderful to see him back again for the 2025 Greenwood Cup.
The Gallant Bob turned into a match race between 1-1 Bentornato and 17-1 Sunny Breeze, the result uncertain until the final yards when the favorite, giving Irad Ortiz his third win of the day, got up by a neck. Old friend Ned Allard had Sunny Breeze ready for the big race after the horse finished third in the BOB prep race behind Buccherino, who finished a very good third Saturday for Park Hall of Fame trainer Alfredo Velazquez.
The result was not at all uncertain in the Turf Monster, which was actually run on the dirt. Butch Reid had trained one $1 million earner when Aug. 26 began. By late afternoon on Sept. 21, he had four: first Morning Matcha, then Neecie Marie, and now the cool 9-year-old Smooth B who, in his 62nd start for Glenn Bennett’s LC Racing, ran away from the field in the Monster. The $150,000 winner’s share increased his earnings to $1,043,447, with 12 wins, 13 seconds, and 9 thirds. Just three months away from his 10th birthday, Smooth B just keeps finding a way.
So, as we get set to celebrate the new Parx Hall of Fame Class (Jack Lamar, Rich Romano, Ruby Bleu) on Oct. 19 and the track’s 50th anniversary on Nov. 4, another Pennsylvania Derby Day is in the books. As always, my only regret when it ends every year is that we have to wait a year until the next one. But the waiting and the anticipation is, in the end, what makes the event so special.
