Conditioner Tim Ritchey, who will turn 60-years-old
on Preakness Day this May, began riding horses as a 3-year-old on his uncle’s
farm near Pittsburgh and went on to spend some time riding steeplechase races
before he started training Thoroughbreds in 1974.
What followed was more than two decades as a kind of road
warrior, putting more than 60,000 miles a year on his car as he traveled to and
from the various day and night tracks of the Mid-Atlantic circuit, spotting his
horses at all of them in search of relatively minor purses before he picked up
the pace significantly by becoming Delaware Park’s leading trainer five times
in the ’90s with a sixth title at the First State oval in 2001.
And then along came Afleet Alex. Ritchey won his
first Grade I race with Afleet Alex by saddling him to win Saratoga’s
prestigious Hopeful Stakes in the summer of 2004 and came back the
following spring to capture the Preakness and Belmont Stakes with
that same life-changing charge.
“Afleet Alex was very good to me from the time I bought
him,” said Ritchey Tuesday, speaking over the phone from Oaklawn
Park,
“and he’s still being very good to me.”
That fact would be most prominently exemplified lately by Elite
Alex, a son of Afleet Alex owned by Elite Alex LLC who will travel from Hot
Springs, Arkansas, to New Orleans this week to run in Saturday’s $1 million
Louisiana Derby, centerpiece event of the Fair Grounds racing season for
98 years and a contest which will become the richest Thoroughbred race ever run
in New Orleans with this weekend’s renewal.
“(Elite Alex) only ran once as a 2-year-old,” Ritchey said.
“Because he was such a big, long-striding colt, we had to give him more time to
develop, and now he’ll probably need between $250,000 to $300,000 graded stakes
earnings to make the field for the Kentucky Derby. With Afleet Alex, we already
had all the graded stakes earnings we needed.
“That’s one of the reasons we decided at the last minute to
come to the Louisiana Derby – because of the new million-dollar purse, but
another reason was because of that long stretch run at Fair Grounds. That suits
his running style. Elite Alex is different from Afleet Alex because he’s a lot
bigger and he doesn’t have that quick sprint that Afleet Alex had, but he does
have a high cruising speed and he’ll keep coming at you. With that longer run
to the turn in the Louisiana Derby, and that longer stretch run there, it gives
you more time to make up for any mistakes (like traffic problems from tiring
speed horses in front of him).
“Some of those other horses in the Louisiana Derby are
speed horses whose trainers are probably hoping that they can get out there in
front with an easy lead and use their early cruising speed to keep going,” said
Ritchey, “but the new longer distance of the Louisiana Derby should help my
horse. A mile and an eighth should help separate the pretenders from the
contenders.”
Elite Alex was entered in last Saturday’s Grade II Rebel
Stakes at Oaklawn, but drew an outside post which would have compromised his
chances and was scratched after entry time in favor of the Louisiana Derby.
“The Louisiana Derby was always an option,” said Ritchey,
“and I had talked to Calvin (Borel, Elite Alex’s jockey) about
this other idea for some time. My horse was ready to run last week and he’s
still ready to run.”
Interestingly, Borel, who was born in Catahoula,
Louisiana
in the heart of Cajun Country, has won three of the last four Kentucky Derbys
but has never won a Louisiana Derby