Whenever he races next, empty feed tub is key for Fierceness

The front-burner story this week for Mike Repole was whether he would send Fierceness to race Saturday in the Grade 1, $1.05 million Haskell Stakes at Monmouth Park or hold him back another week and wait for the $500,000 Jim Dandy (G2) next Saturday at Saratoga.

Repole ultimately decided to wait until next week.

While that either-or decision kept racing’s highest-profile owner in the glare of the media spotlight, there was something else on Repole’s back burner. It will continue to simmer until Fierceness finishes that next assignment.

Will the 2023 Eclipse Award winner as the top juvenile male continue his confounding pattern of being good one race and bad the next? If so, Fierceness is due for a win.

Repole thinks he and Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher may have figured out why this happens.

“He’s not the biggest eater in the world,” Repole said this week on Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. “I wish he was more like me, because I like to eat.”

Apparently for Fierceness, the need for feed ebbs and flows with his speed figures. His victories in his odd-numbered races by 11 1/4 lengths on debut, by 6 1/4 lengths in a championship-clinching Breeders’ Cup Juvenile triumph and by 13 1/2 in the Florida Derby (G1) have been followed by a less than voracious appetite.

In his even-numbered races, including defeats by 20 1/4 lengths in the Champagne (G1), 3 1/2 in the Holy Bull (G3) and 24 1/2 in the Kentucky Derby, Fierceness has devoured his feed tub.

“He eats less after a win, and he loses some weight,” Repole said. “He runs such a huge effort, it takes a lot out of him. I think Todd’s on the path that, you know what, let’s just spread the races out.”

The worst performances for the City of Light colt bred by Repole came six and five weeks after wins. It has been 2 1/2 months since the Kentucky Derby. Only Fierceness’s three-month winter break was longer.

“I think the extra time has done him well,” Pletcher said last week. “I’m glad we made the decision to skip the Belmont.”

The science is not exact, though. Fierceness won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile 27 days after he came up empty in the Champagne, but his runaway in the Florida Derby came eight weeks after finishing third in the Holy Bull.

“I think what Todd has now figured out is some horses just need more spacing,” Repole said. “When to run back to back, some horses could run every two weeks, four weeks. This is a horse that probably should be running every six to nine weeks.”

Whether eating habits quantify a horse’s penchant to bounce may not be an exact science. More tangibly evident in Fierceness’s losses has been his trouble getting out of the gate. His lunge to start the Champagne shook Irad Ortiz Jr. off balance. His head was turned the wrong way to start the Holy Bull, a race in which he took John Velázquez on a bumper-car ride to the first turn. In the Kentucky Derby, Fierceness hopped up in the gate, and Velázquez hustled him forward only to run out of fuel in the second turn.

“He got in a lot of trouble coming out of the gate,” Pletcher said before the Derby. “He wasn’t able to get into his rhythm the way he’d like to.”

It may not be much different for Fierceness than it is for a finely tuned human athlete. Eat well before the big event, and get off to a good start.

Not for nothing, but Repole knows all too well that his horses’ fitness can be everything. Not too many owners have been cursed to have two potential favorites scratched in the final hours before the Kentucky Derby the way he had with Uncle Mo because of lingering gastrointestinal trouble in 2011 and Forte with a cranky foot last year.

And then there was last Saturday at Saratoga.

“Last week at 5:30 in the morning, I got a call from Todd that Mentee, who was the favorite and Fierceness’s brother in the Sanford (G3), had a 102 temperature,” Repole said. As he said later, “There’s a lot that can happen before the race. We all know that.”