Bucchero becomes richest Indiana-bred with Woodford repeat

“He was $8,000 behind Lady Foghorn, who passed Unreachable Star, who was another Indiana-bred of mine,” said winning trainer Tim Glyshaw, who grew up in Evansville, started his training career at Ellis Park and regularly races at the track while stabled at Churchill Downs and Indiana Grand. “It was something I wanted to get back for one of our horses, and now he has. That means a lot to me.”

Bucchero will have an opportunity to pad that statistic Nov. 3 in the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at his hometown track of Churchill Downs. He was fourth — beaten only a length for everything — in the Turf Sprint at Del Mar a year ago.

It was Bucchero’s first victory since last year’s Woodford, which he won at 26-1 odds. This year he was the 3-1 favorite under regular rider Fernando De La Cruz.

“He’s had a ton of trouble in a ton of races this year,” Glyshaw said. “He’s been a tough-luck horse. I read where a handicapper said he always seems to find trouble. I don’t know if that’s necessarily true, but he seems to have a lot of troubled trips. His three races at Keeneland were just perfect for him. Even his race in the Shakertown (in April) where he was second, no one was going to beat Bound for Nowhere that day. He ran a winning race; Bound for Nowhere just freaked.

“The horses are going to have to come to us this year, from California and the East Coast,” he said of the Breeders’ Cup. “He’s run two really, really nice races on Churchill’s turf course. It has been a little softer during the September meet and it’s always soft in November. Obviously he doesn’t mind soft, and some of the horses from out West do mind soft. So I’m pretty confident he’ll run a great race. When you go against those kinds of horses, you don’t know what a great race is. I thought he ran a great race in the Breeders’ Cup last year. It’s a 5 1/2-furlong turf sprint. Literally you can run these races 10 times and get eight different winners. Hopefully it will be our lucky time.”

Harlan Malter, head of the Ironhorse Racing Stable partnership that owns Bucchero, heaped praise on Glyshaw.

“It’s not easy to do what he’s done with this horse,” Malter said. “All the thanks to Tim. It’s just been an amazing experience for all of us who own the horse. We had a tremendous amount of confidence (going into last year’s Woodford) when he was 26-1. And we had about the same amount of confidence. We thought we’d win last year, and we felt we’d win this year.”

Of the Breeders’ Cup, Malter said of the horse who not only has traveled to Del Mar but this past June ran at England’s Royal Ascot meet: “He can see the track from his stall. It will be the shortest trip he’s had in a long time, so we’re excited about it.”

Also earning a likely shot at the Turf Sprint was Will Call, who beat Bucchero to win the Grade 3 Churchill Downs Turf Sprint on Derby weekend but was a puzzling seventh as the heavy favorite in Ellis Park’s Kentucky Downs Preview Turf Sprint on Aug. 5 in his prior start.

“Big effort, much improved off his Ellis Park race,” said trainer Brad Cox. “The Breeders’ Cup is in our backyard, and he likes Churchill Downs’ turf course, so we’ll see what happens. He’d been training extremely well, so I expected a much better effort, and he gave it to us.”