Owner: Choices for Rich Strike include fall return or retirement

The R word passed the lips of Rick Dawson on Wednesday when he talked about the future for Rich Strike.

“The plan that most people are most interested in is when will we see him on the track?” Dawson said in a telephone interview from his home base in Oklahoma. “If not, when will he retire?”

Not that Dawson was leaning that way, but he said it could be an option for his 80-1 Kentucky Derby winner. Rich Strike has not finished first since that day in May 2022. He has started only once since November. If there is a return to racing, it might not be until this November, more than six months since a fifth-place disappointment in the Grade 2 Alysheba on the Kentucky Oaks undercard.

It was right after that when trainer Eric Reed resigned, because he and Dawson disagreed about the direction of a media deal to tell the Rich Strike story. Before he chose Hall of Famer Bill Mott to fill that void, Dawson said he ordered a full body scan on Rich Strike. That revealed the main reason the 4-year-old Keen Ice colt has been on the bench.

“It was diagnosed that he was partially lame in his left front and more seriously lame in his right front,” Dawson said in an interview that will be posted in its entirety Friday on Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. “We started treatment. We obviously turned him out.”

Examined at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Ky., Rich Strike was found by Dr. Larry Bramlage to have proximal suspensory desmitis in both fronts. On its website, the American Association of Equine Practitioners said the ligament inflammation “is a common injury in both the fore limbs and the hind limbs of athletic horses. ... Proximal suspensory desmitis in the fore limb results in the sudden onset of lameness.”

According to the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority, shockwave therapy was administered to Rich Strike on Aug. 10.

“Everything is going forward. He’s looking great,” said Dawson, who visited Rich Strike early this month at Margaux Farm in Lexington, the new home for his nine racehorses. “The left front is completely healed. The right front is nearing that. He looks great. He’s obviously feeling better. He’s not favoring either front at this point.”

With each passing day on the farm owned by Jim and Susan Hill and run by general manager Richard Budge, Dawson said Rich Strike gradually is getting back to normal.

“He’s jogging extremely well, very smoothly,” Dawson said. “There’s no sign that there’s an issue. I think the plan is to gallop him this week. Later in the week is kind of his first gallops. From there, every time we gallop, we’ll fully examine him.”

Presuming everything continues to go smoothly, Dawson said the next important step will be a conversation with Mott about an autumn timetable.

“We’ll probably have him move to more of a normal training regimen in mid-September, probably at Churchill (Downs),” Dawson said. “Bill keeps a string of horses there. We know that he likes that track, so that’ll probably be a good environment for him. We’re looking at mid-September before we actually can get back to doing what we consider (normal).”

Pinning down a comeback race is a whole nuther matter. Dawson said he wanted to wait until Rich Strike was 100 percent healthy. And then some.

“The earliest we would race would be late November at Churchill before their fall meet closes,” he said. “If not then, I’m not real sure at that point. We’ll have to think about it. The plan at this point is to give him as much time as he needs plus another month. We’re going to rule on the very conservative side.”

The Nov. 24 running of the Clark Stakes, which was downgraded to a Grade 2 this year, might look on first blush to be a race where Rich Strike could make his return. It was only 20 days after he finished fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic when he wheeled back to race in the 2022 Clark at Churchill Downs, only to finish last.

“I think we would have to have a race in advance of the Clark, which backtracks you on the calendar five weeks or so,” Dawson said. “That puts you in late October. Will he be ready in late October even for an allowance race or for some smaller, stakes race? I doubt it. … I don’t see us in the Clark, even though I’d love to run in the Clark, unless Rich Strike absolutely is training off the board and Bill can train him to race-ready without having a race (beforehand).”

With the Clark unlikely, Dawson said he did not have any grand vision for what Rich Strike would target late this year. He acknowledged a return to the synthetic surface at Turfway Park would be a possibility. Dawson also entertained the notion of a winter at Gulfstream Park, which had him pondering the bigger targets in early 2024, such as the Pegasus World Cup Invitational (G1) in Florida and the Saudi Cup (G1) and the Dubai World Cup (G1) in the Middle East.

On the other hand, Dawson did not rule out the possibility of Rich Strike getting even more time off this winter before making a comeback at age 5.

“Bill and I have kind of come to the conclusion that once Bill’s got him, and he’s got his eyes on him for a month-and-a-half or two or whatever that might be, Bill’s going to know, and he’s going to make some recommendations as to where we go with Rich Strike,” Dawson said.

There also was that other, other choice, as in none of the above. If retirement to a breeding career were to be the decision, Dawson knows there are potentially lucrative November sales in Kentucky. As they loom, so does what once seemed like the distant notion of retiring Rich Strike.

“Just in the last couple of weeks, it has become something that we have to look at,” he said. “I should make a decision on that soon. What I mean by that is I could potentially nominate him for sale in November in Lexington at either Keeneland or Fasig-Tipton, or there are other options.”

Dawson said if Rich Strike were to train well enough and demonstrate an ability to continue racing, he would want to stay on as his owner. If the decision were made to send Rich Strike to stud, then Dawson said a sale could be pushed back toward the end of the breeding cycle late this winter.

“You could potentially have a digital, satellite sale just for Rich Strike,” he said.

Whenever Rich Strike moves to the next phase of his career, his value can go only so high on his current record of 14: 2-1-3 with the only other win coming in a maiden race. Even if money were not a factor, Dawson said legacy was an important consideration in making a decision on the future for his storybook colt.

“It’s important to me that his legacy is given every opportunity to grow,” he said. “However, not at the risk of Rich Strike. Physically, if he’s telling us, ‘I’d love to race again, but I’m just not up to it,’ then we’re just not, and we’re just going to have to live with that record. And that’s OK, too.”