Mark Casse’s decision to run William Farish Jr.’s Pool Play in
Saturday’s 30th running of the $500,000-added Stephen Foster Handicap
Presented by Abu Dhabi (Grade I) was not a wild stab or a whim, as
racing fans across the country discovered when the 6-year-old son of
Silver Deputy stormed through the stretch to edge Mission Impazible by a
neck at 36-1 odds.
A three-time winner of the Sovereign Award that annually honors
Canada’s top trainer, Casse sent Pool Play to the Foster with a specific
mission: to determine if the distance-loving horse, after 27 races on
synthetic and turf courses, would fare on a dirt course. If he ran as
well over the Churchill Downs dirt as Casse hoped, step two would be a
bid for the $5 million Breeders’ Cup Classic (GI) at the Louisville
track on Nov. 5.
Pool Play handled Saturday’s initial test with aplomb when he
posted the third-largest upset in the three-decade history of the
Stephen Foster. On Sunday, Casse was working up a plan to get him to
the next step.
“It’s nice when things work, when you have a plan and it works,”
Casse said on the morning after his most important win at Churchill
Downs. “I understood him being that big a price. Here’s a horse
running against some of the best older horses and they all had proven
form on the dirt. Well, here we had a horse who had never ran on it, so
I could understand.”
Along with watching Pool Play blossom from an unknown factor to
Breeders’ Cup Classic contender in the Foster, the Stephen Foster upset
was special to Casse for personal reasons. The Indianapolis native
spent his early years as a trainer beneath the historic Twin Spires, and
has a 1988 Spring Meet training title so show for it.
“It was a real proud moment for a lot of reasons,” Casse said.
“One is when you do something that’s a little unorthodox, that’s always
nice. And Churchill is where I started. Churchill is special and
always has been. To win a race like that at Churchill Downs means a
lot.”
Casse believed that the Breeders’ Cup Classic’s 1 ¼-mile
distance fits Pool Play perfectly, but the horse’s dirt prowess was a
question mark. If Pool Play would handle any dirt course, Casse felt it
would be the one-mile main track at Churchill Downs. Casse believes the
course is extraordinarily kind to horses that run well on turf and
synthetic courses. While Pool Play’s home base at Toronto’s Woodbine is
a synthetic Polytrack surface, Casse sees difference in Woodbine’s
manufactured footing and Mother Nature’s dirt at Churchill.
“I was out there (on the Churchill dirt) this morning watching
horses train and you can see they get into the ground only about two
inches, at most,” Casse said. “If you walk across Churchill Downs and
you walk across Woodbine’s racetrack, that’s how much they penetrate the
surface. It’s almost identical.”
It’s Casse’s opinion that the clay that is an important part of
the make-up of Churchill Downs’ sandy loam surface is the key ingredient
that makes the Louisville surface is comfortable to horses that do
their best running on synthetic or turf courses, or possess pedigrees
that point toward those surfaces.
Whatever the case, Casse’s plan worked well for Pool Play in the
Stephen Foster. Now he’s looking to formulate a plant over the coming
weeks that will get his veteran back to Churchill Downs and ready to
offer his best effort against an expected international field the
Breeders’ Cup Classic.
“We’ve been planning to go to Saratoga with a string, so what I
think I’ll do is take him to Saratoga and see how he trains over the
dirt,” Casse said. “Just because you like the dirt at Churchill Downs
doesn’t mean you’re going to like it at Saratoga. We’ll train him there
and if he trains all right we’ll think about the Whitney (GI on Aug. 6
at Saratoga). Our number one goal will be the Breeders’ Cup. How we
get there is kind of secondary, really. So everything we do from now on
will be that kind of plan. I wouldn’t even be shocked if he ran on the
grass again.”
The $327,127 winner’s share of the Stephen Foster purse boosted
Pool Play’s career earnings to $909,556 with a record of 6-6-5 from 28
starts. His only other graded stakes win came in the 2009 Durham Cup
(GIII) on Polytrack at Woodbine. In his previous start, Pool Play
finished second on turf in the Grade II Elkhorn at Keeneland, where he
was beaten by 1 ¼ lengths by Musketier-GER.
So Pool Play’s victory is clearly the high point of the career
of his racing career to date, but all that could change on Nov. 5 when,
if all has gone well, Casse’s horse gets a chance to shine again on the
Churchill Downs dirt in the Breeders’ Cup Classic.
“What I’m trying to do is get there with a happy horse in the
fall,” Casse said. “He showed what we needed him to show yesterday, and
that is that he belongs. I’ve said all the along the mile and a
quarter will be right up his alley. So he may go to Toronto and run on
the grass, he may run in the Whitney – I’m not sure yet. Obviously you
always like to win, but our number one goal is to be the best he can be
on Breeders’ Cup Day.”