Kruljac, The Chosen Vron have 1 stall, big Del Mar presence

Del Mar, Calif.

Trainer Eric Kruljac’s stable doesn’t take up much space on the Del Mar backstretch. In fact, it’s just a single stall.

But the horse who inhabits it, The Chosen Vron, is a larger presence than his humble quarters in barn PP would suggest.

The 6-year-old sprinter has consistently dominated his fellow California-bred runners for the last three years and has stepped up on several occasions to beat top open-company runners, including two straight wins in the six-furlong Grade 1 Bing Crosby at Del Mar.

Undefeated this year from five starts, The Chosen Vron is being aimed at the Breeders’ Cup Sprint on Nov. 2 at Del Mar. But first he will contest the Pat O’Brien Stakes (G2) on Saturday. Señor Buscador, winner of the $20 million Saudi Cup (G1) in February, also is expected to join the field for the seven-furlong race when entries are drawn Wednesday, making his first start in nearly five months.

The Chosen Vron has taken Kruljac on the ride of his professional career, one made more poignant because he campaigned his dam, Tiz Molly, and bred the current star of his six-horse stable. The others are stabled at his base at Los Alamitos.

“I love the game from the point where you breed them,” the affable 71-year-old said Friday, shortly after The Chosen Vron completed his preparations for the Pat O’Brien with a four-furlong workout in 48.2 seconds. “I like buying yearlings too, but there’s nothing like breeding one and getting it through the races. Having it be an allowance horse is what you aim for. But sometimes you get lucky.”

The Chosen Vron, who is co-owned by Kruljac and several of the owners who initially invested in Tiz Molly, has been good and consistent since breaking his maiden at first asking at Santa Anita on Dec. 27, 2020. He has won 19 of 24 starts and has earned nearly $1.66 million while failing to hit the board only twice, in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Santa Anita and in the 2022 Pat O’Brien.

Kruljac said The Chosen Vron’s durability and consistency are partly because of the decision to geld him when he was undergoing surgery to treat a problem with a stifle, comparable to a human’s knees, before his first start at 2.

But he also heaps praise on groom Herlindo Garcia, who has cared for The Chosen Vron since he arrived at the track four years ago, and jockey Hector Berrios, who has ridden the horse in his last 16 races.

“What a horseman he is,” Kruljac said of the Chile-born Berrios. “He’s a real South American caballero.”

He also is quick to give the horse his due, describing him as talented, smart and enthusiastic.

“He’s half human being,” Kruljac said of The Chosen Vron. “Mark Glatt’s son was on the clockers’ stand (for Friday’s work) and afterward he turned to me and said, ‘That horse just trains himself, doesn’t he?’ ”

Serendipity also played a walk-on role in The Chosen Vron story.

Kruljac purchased Tiz Molly, The Chosen Vron’s dam, for the bargain basement price of $1,200 at a California Thoroughbred Breeders Association sale in January 2019 and brought in a handful of co-owners.

The Kentucky-bred filly won her first two starts at 3 but suffered a career-ending injury at 4 in a race at Santa Anita. Kruljac and the other owners decided to breed her under the Tiz Molly Partners banner.

Her first foal was by the top California stallion Unusual Heat and could run a bit, so the partners decided to try the match again the following year, only to learn that Unusual Heat had died. So they decided to try a new stallion standing at the same farm: Vronsky, a son of Danzig and winner of three of 11 races.

“He was the next best thing,” Kruljac recalled. “I wasn’t that familiar with him but I looked up his record and said, ‘Breed her to him.’ The rest is history.”

Kruljac’s backstory also is bristling with interesting twists and unexpected connections.

He was introduced to horse racing by his grandfather, Walter S. Markham, a produce broker and cattle breeder who also kept a few Thoroughbred mares on his Monterey County ranch. He sent their offspring to the Hall of Fame trainer Michael “Buster” Millerick, best known for his work with the difficult superstar Native Diver.

“He was something else,” Kruljac said of Millerick. “Very best friends with my grandfather.”

Kruljac was a high school linebacker who was promising enough to win a football scholarship at Arizona State University, but a busted ankle ended that dream.

He said he then transferred to University of Arizona, where Bob Baffert was a fraternity brother for a time.

After college, he embarked on a 16-year career as a private detective, working primarily on insurance cases.

He was living on a small farm in Peoria, Ariz., at the time and had a stallion and a small band of broodmares there. After his brother took out his training license in 1976, Eric began sending him the offspring the mares produced. When his brother left the business in 1986, Eric put aside his gumshoes and stepped into his sibling’s boots. He saddled his first horse, Son of Oly, in a claiming race with a $1,735 purse on Aug. 30, 1986, at Prescott Downs.

The rest, as he says, is history.

Eric Kruljac's first big breakthrough occurred with Leave Me Alone, a horse he picked out as a yearling and trained to capture the 2005 Test Stakes (G1) at Saratoga by 7 3/4 lengths.

But that was only a prelude to the success that has come with The Chosen Vron,.

Kruljac said that The Chosen Vron is fit and “ready to roll” for the Pat O’Brien and likely will make one more start before the Breeders’ Cup, assuming he remains in good health. He said he thought he erred last year by giving the horse a break of a little over three months between his Bing Crosby victory and the 2023 Sprint, when he finished fifth, 4 1/4 lengths behind winner Elite Power.

But the trainer is used to dealing with the unexpected after nearly 40 years in the training trenches. He said he will pay close attention to his charge in the coming weeks as he decides whether one more Breeders’ Cup prep makes sense.

“Herlindo and the horse will decide what’s going to happen,” he said.