Meet the new Prince of D. It's Zito.
When Zito saddled the overlooked Da' Tara for his dismantling of Big Brown in the Belmont Stakes, it reminded me of Lukas' modus operandi: Keep throwing horses at the opposition until one of them sticks. Da' Tara is a latter-day Cat Thief, the Lukas trainee who won the Breeders' Cup Classic at Gulfstream Park in 1999. Cat Thief, who paid $41.20, had won one of 11 starts that year. After the Breeders' Cup, he went 0 for 10, and finished his career with four wins in 30 tries. But he ran the race of his life on the day it most counted because Lukas tossed him into the fray.
Zito's not right all the time, but he's got the right idea. Lukas once started five horses in the Kentucky Derby, and won it with Grindstone, the colt he treated like an afterthought in pre-race palaver. Zito started five in the Derby in 2005. None finished better than seventh, but that's not the point. As Charlie Whittingham, another trainer known for multiple entries in big races, liked to say, "We've got 'em surrounded."
Zito's two Derby winners had records like Cat Thief. Other than the Derby, Strike the Gold was beaten 25 out of 30 starts. Go for Gin never won another race after the Derby, but Zito had him cranked up on the red-letter day. Holy Bull lost only three times, and Go for Gin's Derby was one of them. In Louis Quatorze's Preakness, Zito gave Lukas a dollop of his own medicine. He took a jockey Lukas had fired, Pat Day, and ended Lukas' matchless streak of six straight Triple Crown wins.
Todd Pletcher's another trainer who, despite coming up empty in Kentucky and Maryland, still knows how to play the Triple Crown game. It's not happenstance that Pletcher is a former Lukas disciple. Pletcher keeps running his 3-year-olds till they win. (Another Whittingham-ism: "Wotcha think I got 'em here for, watchdogs?). Pletcher's capable of starting five in the Derby, a race he's yet to win. Last year, he agonized about running Rags to Riches in the Belmont. Zito wasn't asked, but he could have told him: She won't win if she's not there.
Early on Belmont day, Zito spent about 10 minutes on the ESPN show, analyzing the race, and if Da' Tara's name was mentioned, I must have missed it. Robert LaPenta, who owns the colt, said that he wasn't asked all week about his horse. Tellingly, Zito did say that because he's a New York guy, the crowd might give him a pass if he became the Triple Crown party-pooper again. The first time, Zito and Marylou Whitney, owner of Birdstone, apologized for smiting Smarty Jones. This time, no acts of contrition were said or expected. The crowd at Belmont Park thirsted for a Triple Crown winner, but Zito and Da' Tara were not a bad consolation prize. The underlying hostility toward Big Brown, because of the company he keeps, was not a mirage.
"The Belmont is a pedigree race," Zito told the New York Post. "I've had two winners and six seconds, and all of them had mile-and-a-half pedigrees. I was jumping up and down, I was jumping up and down, because I knew (Da' Tara) had the pedigree, and I knew he would stay the trip."
In a small way, California bloodlines are interwoven with both Da' Tara and Denis of Cork, the second-place finisher in the Belmont. Tiznow, the sire of Da' Tara, was the first California-bred to win a Breeders' Cup race. Da' Tara's dam, Torchera, is a daughter of the late Pirate's Bounty, one of California's preeminent sires, and Kaylem Ho, who was the dam of a couple of stakes winners when she was almost 20 years old. The Pirate's Bounty-Kaylem Ho connection also turns up in Denis of Cork's family. They were the parents of Sound Wisdom, Denis of Cork's grandam.
"Wouldn't have been a bad way to play the exacta, would it?" said Russell Drake, who has been with Marty and Pam Wygod's River Edge Farm in Buellton, Calif., since the start, in 1975. Drake remembers them all--Kaylem Ho, Sound Wisdom, Torchera, and of course Pirate's Bounty, who sired more than 60 stakes winners, including Pirate's Revenge and Private Persuasion, who were Grade I winners. In 1999, when Torchera was a 6-year-old and in foal to Unbridled, the Wygods sold her for $350,000. Drake remembers Kaylem Ho being sold when she was well up in years and in foal to Rahy, for about $100,000.
In 1978, the Wygods thought they had a legitimate Triple Crown prospect in Pirate's Bounty, but the Lefty Nickerson-trained colt, a son of the champion Hoist the Flag, cracked a knee in a starting-gate accident. Pirate's Bounty, still at stud until he was 24, was put down at 31, in 2006. His get has earned more than $32 million.
"I'm proud that he turned out to be a part of this Belmont," Drake said on the phone from River Edge. "Putting him down was one of the hardest things I ever had to do. But he had arthritic knees, and was suffering, and it was the only thing to do. He's buried here. He sure built a lot of fences on this place before he was gone."