Del Mar: Roll On Big Joe has Hess thinking Breeders’ Cup

Roll On Big Joe has had a career year, one good enough to warrant a chance against Grade 1 company Saturday in the $400,000 Bing Crosby Stakes at Del Mar and maybe a spot in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

With a pair of Grade 3s among his four wins this year, it is hard to fathom that just two starts back, he could have been claimed.

“We took him to Kentucky and tried to win an allowance race,” his trainer Bob Hess Jr. said in a phone conversation early Thursday at Del Mar. “He had just shipped in. He wasn’t maybe as sharp as he is now, and he kind of flattened out late that day. So we actually dangled him in for a claiming tag of 175.”

Head to Head: Handicapping Grade 1 Bing Crosby.

Yes, the 5-year-old gelding who cost Tim Cohen’s Rancho Temescal $90,000 at a 2022 sale in his native Florida was hanging like the juiciest apple on the lowest branch of the tree. Hess gambled that no one would bite on the pricey $175,000 tag. He also was counting on Roll On Big Joe to find his racing chops that day at Churchill Downs.

The May 16 gamble paid off. Roll On Big Joe was not claimed, and he won that top level optional-claiming allowance sprint against the likes of millionaire Tejano Twist.

“He got his confidence back, and now he’s in top form.”

Staying in Kentucky for the rest of the spring, Roll On Big Joe followed that score with a win over heavy favorite Dr. Venkman in the Kelly’s Landing (G3) at Churchill. That has set him up for a return to California for the biggest test of a career that is coming into full bloom for Hess and the Cohen family.

“Whenever we buy a young, unraced horse, ... you know I can claim any claimer I want, but a young horse, you have to hope it can have stakes potential,” Hess said on Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. “We did feel that. It took a while. Obviously, it took quite a while for him to come around. He was immature when he was younger. Pretty coltish. So I think with maturity and gelding him, he’s really turned into a nice horse. To say I thought he’d be a Grade 1 performer, nah, I wouldn’t say that.”

Roll on Big Joe missed almost a year of racing from the spring of 2023 through the winter of 2024 for what Hess called “babyish” knees. He had no surgeries other than castration during the time off. His first race back resulted in a March 2024 win on the Tapeta at Gulfstream Park, a performance that showed Hess that this first-time gelding might have “more heart” that any of the horses he has trained in his 38-year career.

“He broke kind of awkwardly, and he was back near the back of the pack,” Hess said. “Just kind of like a sports car, he worked his way through the traffic and got up impressively, late.”

Since he was gelded, Roll On Big Joe has not finished off the board in 10 main-track starts. There was one other start in there at Del Mar in September. It was an experience Hess sooner would forget.

“His only really bad race was that turf debacle,” he said, ruing the memory of that last-place result. “Otherwise, he’s been extremely consistent.”

If there was a coming-of-age race for Roll On Big Joe, it came in September when he carried odds of 21-1 and finished a distant second in the Santa Anita Sprint Championship (G2). That became a bigger deal when the winner Straight No Chaser went on to win the Eclipse Award as the top male sprinter.

“I was I guess somewhat disappointed at the time,” Hess said. “But when Straight No Chaser comes back to win the Breeders’ Cup (Sprint), that kind of made me open my eyes and think we might have something special here.”

As Hess spoke Thursday, Roll On Big Joe was finishing a pre-dawn jog at Del Mar.

“He’s got his neck bowed and looks like he has tons of energy,” Hess said.

That energy has been on display in a variety of ways. For examples, Roll On Big Joe closed from fifth in his comeback race, led at every call to win the Palos Verdes (G3) at Santa Anita and stalked before scoring in his last two wins, both ridden by Saturday’s jockey Julien Leparoux.

“He likes to be kind of just sat on,” Hess said. “Not choked, but not gunned. I think Julien fits him perfectly.”

Morning-line favorite World Record, a Grade 2-winning 4-year-old for trainer Rodolphe Brisset, lines up one stall to the inside of Roll On Big Joe, who drew post 6 in Saturday’s field of nine 3-year-olds and up. Five-year-old Dr. Venkman is back to try and come from off the pace for Mark Glatt, and Bob Baffert starts 5-year-old Hejazi for the second time off a 10-month layoff.

Where does Roll On Big Joe fit in Saturday’s pace picture?

“He’ll lay wherever, really,” Hess said. “He doesn’t mind being in front or even somewhere third or fourth. I think he’s very tactical, and he’ll go when the jock pushes the button.”

Saturday’s race is an automatic qualifier for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, which will be run over the same six-furlong course as the Bing Crosby. The $2 million date Nov. 1 is the ultimate target for Roll On Big Joe. At least it is now.

“That’d be the dream and the hope,” Hess said. “The owners did pay a supplement, because he wasn’t nominated as a young horse, so they recently paid a supplement to allow him to compete there.”

That supplement actually took the form of a fee to nominate Roll On Big Joe’s sire Prospective, a 16-year-old son of Malibu Moon whose progeny include Baby Yoda, a Grade 2-winning gelding who is on the verge of becoming a millionaire for trainer Bill Mott.

If Roll On Big Joe were to win Saturday, it would be the ticket to give Hess his third Breeders’ Cup starter. River Special finished third in the 1992 Juvenile, and Merit Man was second in the 2012 Juvenile Sprint.

For the son of a longtime Northern California training legend who died of COVID in 2020, Roll On Big Joe could bring Hess a fourth Grade 1 victory. Hess saddled River Special in 1992 to wins in the Hollywood Futurity at Hollywood Park and the Norfolk at Santa Anita. He also had D’Wildcat in the 2002 Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel Park.

Where does Hess distinguish Roll On Big Joe among the best he has trained?

“He’s extremely athletic and beautifully balanced,” he said. “He’s like the ultimate sprinter body. He looks like Carl Lewis back in the day.”