By Dick Jerardi
Saturday was an all-day celebration of Smarty Jones, the horse that gave the sport life and his home track a future. That track also hosted 10 stakes races over two afternoons and 51 hours, beginning shortly before 2 p.m. Saturday and ending shortly after 5 p.m. Monday, a perfect appetizer for the big show on Sept. 21, Pennsylvania Derby Day.
It really has been 20 years since that winter and spring of 2004 when Smarty Jones swept the Arkansas prep series, won the Kentucky Derby, and overwhelmed the Preakness, but nobody has forgotten what that felt like and what it meant and what it still means. Smarty Jones was Pat and Roy Champan’s horse, but really, he was everybody’s horse as the Chapmans and trainer John Servis were so open about everything that everybody felt a part of it.
Nobody felt more of a part of it than the people who call Parx Racing home. So it was fitting that the 20th anniversary remembrance was held Saturday on Smarty Jones Day with Servis and Pat Chapman there to present the trophy to the winning owners of the Smarty Jones Stakes who, in a full circle, moment, just happen to be in the ownership group of Mystik Dan, the 2024 Derby winner.
The Smarty Jones winner was Gould’s Gold by Goldencents, Mystik Dan’s sire. The colt is trained by Ken McPeek, the same man who swept this year’s Derby and Kentucky Oaks with the amazing filly Thorpedo Anna. Emmanuel Esquivel, a one-time Parx regular who is riding the Horseshoe Indiana meet this summer, rode the winner.
“First time in Pennsylvania, what a beautiful place,” Lance Gassaway, part of that ownership group, said in the winner’s circle when asked what he thought of Parx.
It was only right that Servis won a stake each day. Saturday’s co-feature, the Cathryn Sophia, the filly he trained to win the 2016 Kentucky Oaks, was won by Black Eyed Susan winner Gun Song for trainer Mark Hennig, jockey Jose Lezcano and owner R. Lee Lewis.
“I really think her best year will be her 4-year-old year,’’ said Hennig, who has managed her 3-year-old season to near perfection, avoiding the “grizzly” that is Thorpedo Anna in all but one start.
Lezcano, down from Saratoga, was the two-day riding star with two wins Saturday and another Monday.
The Salvatore M. Debunda Sprint was the first of Saturday’s six stakes. Buccherino (Lezcano, Parx Hall of Fame trainer Alfredo Velazquez, owner Happy Tenth Stable) ran them off their feet in the 6 1/2-furlong race, winning by 6 1/4 lengths.
The Parx Dash (5 furlongs grass) was won by 7-2 Alogon (jockey Jaime Rodriguez, owner Charles Matses) with a strong, sweeping move that took him from midpack to the front. It was win No. 2,799 in the amazing training career of Ned Allard.
“He ran super today,” Allard said. “He ran into some difficult situations prior to this”
Servis got the first of his two wins in the Mayor’s Mile, but it was not at all easy for 1-5 favorite Adero owned by Carguys Racing LLC. It took him the entire stretch to wear down front-running Concealed Carry for trainer Lou Linder who was also a hard-luck second in the Smarty Jones with Just Step On It.
“We were really tickled to death to get him,” Servis said. “He had a problem early on that he’s learned to live with and he’s been a special horse for us.”
My Buddy B was claimed for $25,000 by owner/trainer Krista Nicole Hetrick on March 8 at Turfway Park. The horse won his first race off the claim by 10 1/4 lengths at Mountaineer, nearly won a stake at Presque Isle, and ran a respectable fifth in the Grade I Vanderbilt at Saratoga. So when the gray went gate to wire in the State Representative’s Sprint, it was no shock. My Buddy B was ridden by Yan Aviles, a regular at Mountaineer and Thistledown.
Monday’s Pennsylvania Day at the Races (11 races for Pa.Breds, including four stakes) was the perfect complement to what was essentially a Pa. Derby Day preview on Saturday.
Mychel Sanchez, the runaway leader in the Parx jockey standings, won two of the four stakes. Trainer Butch Reid, who has the dominant stakes-winning barn at Parx, also won two of the stakes. They won the Marshall Jenney Handicap together on 9-year-old Smooth B, one of the coolest horses at the track who is now just $7,000 shy of $900,000 in career earnings with a record of 11-13-9 in 61 starts. Incredibly, the horse ran in the Jenney for the sixth consecutive year and now has two wins, two seconds and two thirds.
Owner Glenn Bennett of LC Racing flew from a Connecticut meeting to Northeast Philly Airport to make the race and was glad he did.
“He’s named after a guy at work that’s just a cool guy and his nickname is Smooth B,” he said.
The accomplished Gordian Knot went over a half million in earnings when he came rolling late to win the Jump Start with Sanchez and leading trainer Jamie Ness for owner Joe Imbesi.
“I do think he’s still improving,” Sanchez said “He definitely came back to his old self when he was a 2-year-old and a 3-year-old. I do believe there is a little more (there).”
Servis’s second stakes win came in the Storm Cat when Frankie Pennington brought Irish Cork up the rail to win going away for Irish Three Racing LLC.
“It means so much, not just for me, but for the whole barn,” Pennington said. “To win on a big day like this is awesome.”
The performance of the two days came in the final stakes when Morning Matcha came flying up the rail in the Mrs. Penny for Lezcano and Reid to blow the field away by 11 3/4 lengths. With the win for owners Bennett, Chuck Zacney and Gary Barber, the 5-year-old mare became Reid’s second $1 million earner, joining 2020 2-year-old filly champion Vequist. Morning Matcha is now 8-7-7 from 28 starts.
“She’s just been a trooper the whole way along,” Reid said. “We paid a relatively small amount of money ($18,000) for her…She might not be the best horse in the country, but against the right group she gives it her all every time you take her over there and I could not be more proud of her.”
