Myositis Dan Running for Awareness

Entered in Friday night’s featured $43,000 allowance optional claiming event at Churchill Downs is Brereton C. Jones’ Myositis Dan, who was named to specifically build awareness for a disease called Myositis that affects thousands of Americans each year.

 

According to The Myositis Association’s website, myositis.org, Myositis is muscle inflammation and can be caused by infection, injury, certain medicines, exercise, and chronic disease.

 

Myositis Dan will face a solid field of eight 3-year-olds and up in Friday night’s one-mile contest, which goes as Race 8 of 10 on Friday’s Downs After Dark card at approximately 9:39 p.m. ET.

 

“We were contacted by a gentleman named Bob Goldberg, who is the head of the Myositis foundation and also a big horse racing fan,” said Bret Jones, the former Kentucky governor’s son who heads bloodstock services for his father’s Airdrie Stud. “Mr. Goldberg had the idea of calling a few different farms and seeing if they would consider including ‘Myositis’ in the naming of various horses to try and raise awareness for the disease.

 

“It’s a really terrible illness but an illness that not many people know about. So we actually named one horse before Myositis Dan, who was Stop Myositis, but unfortunately Stop Myositis wasn’t very fast, so we didn’t do a very good job getting the name out there with the first one.

 

“Bob called us back a year later and said that he really appreciated us doing it the last year, asked if we would do it again and then told us the story of Dan Schuler. Dan had been stricken with Myositis and eventually sadly lost his battle to it. Of course we said we’d be happy to do it again and he’s turned out to be a really cool horse. We got Dan’s family and Bob in town when he won at Keeneland and they were all in the winner’s circle. It was very emotional but at the same time fantastic for the cause.”

 

Myositis Dan broke his maiden in his second start, taking a 6 ½-furlong race at odds of 16-1 at Keeneland on Oct. 13 of last year.

 

“We were very happy just to raise some awareness and we feel like we have,” Jones said. “Everyone we talk to asks us where the name comes from, and everybody that we tell it to is very eager to spread the word or even become a donor, so it’s really cool.”

 

Trained by Tom Proctor, Myositis Dan finished third in the Derby Trial (Grade III) at Churchill earlier this year, and most recently finished eighth in the Aug. 23 King’s Bishop (GI) at Saratoga.

 

“He’s been doing great,” Jones said. “He had a rough trip in the King’s Bishop; he was down on the inside where you don’t really want to be. There also wasn’t the pace early on that you’d normally expect in the King’s Bishop. But to only get beat by four lengths and change when you don’t have an ideal setup… We’re not huge fans of moral victories but it really wasn’t as bad of a race as it looked like at the time.”

Jones said that a large portion of Myositis Dan’s earnings are donated to the Myositis Association.

 

The Joneses also have a filly entered in Saturday’s $100,000-added Dogwood (GIII) in Enjoy the Family, also trained by Proctor. The 3-year-old daughter of Brother Derek will make just her fourth start on Saturday, coming off a runner-up effort in an allowance optional claiming event at Arlington Park.

 

“Enjoy the Family is training well,” Jones said. “We’re mainly just taking a shot to see where we are. With a 3-year-old filly, we think she has the ability to get some black type on the page and this just looked like a reasonable spot to try and get it done.”

 

The seven-furlong Dogwood is the ninth of 10 races on Saturday’s card with an approximate post time of 4:55 p.m.