Turfway form holds at Keeneland; Verstappen upsets Elkhorn

Lexington, Ky.

Bettors who pore over past performances at Keeneland and ignore strong form from Turfway Park do so at their own risk. That perception might not hold up in the harsh glare of statistics, but it held true in a big way Saturday afternoon in the Grade 2, $350,000 Elkhorn Stakes.

Graded-stakes debutant Verstappen (16-1), the second longest shot in the field of eight older horses, parlayed his recent form from the Turfway winter into a thrilling, upset victory that left the ownership group in celebratory delirium in the winner’s circle. Richard Brodie’s Andrew Farm, Mike Morgan’s For the People Racing Stable and Rick Imbert’s Windmill Manor Farm were screaming and dancing at the finish line.

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On the turf course where the victory had just occurred, trainer Brendan Walsh and jockey Declan Cannon were smiling, too. Yet they were more subdued during the trophy presentation. Like they had been there and done that. As they had on the all-weather Tapeta track up north at Turfway.

“The horses up there, they seem to stay happy,” Cannon said. “You don’t have to train them as hard, and they definitely hold their form when they come here. You see a lot of the Turfway races are going to get stronger and stronger. It’s great for Kentucky racing.”

Verstappen, a gelded, 4-year-old son of War Front, had two allowance wins at the Florence, Ky., track before he finished second there last month in the Kentucky Cup Classic. The two wins were at 1 1/4 miles. The loss was at 1 1/8. Saturday’s race was the first in which Verstappen raced 1 1/2 miles.

“I think it’s a question of the distance with him,” said Walsh, who, like Cannon, won the Elkhorn for the first time in its 38 runnings. “He got those longer races at Turfway. They worked out good. The Kentucky Turf Cup might have been a tick short for him. ... I think that’s it more than anything.”

It looked like the same thing might be said of Red Knight (6-1). Off a nearly three-month layoff since winning the William L. McKnight (G3) at Gulfstream Park, the 9-year-old Pure Prize gelding rallied from last place Saturday to engage Verstappen in an eyeball-to-eyeball duel in the deep stretch.

“He moved hard,” Red Knight’s rider Gerardo Corrales said. “A very strong finish.”

Closing from next to last, Verstappen did not take the lead for good until the final four strides. Carrying 118 pounds, he finished a head in front of Red Knight, who was assigned 120.

“Second best. Simple as that,” Red Knight’s trainer Mike Maker said. “It’d have been better if we were first and they were second.”

On a breezy, gray, 58-degree afternoon when there were sprinkles of rain, Verstappen and Red Knight conceded early ground to pacesetter Tiz the Bomb (12-1), who eventually finished fifth.

The race unfolded slowly, and Tiz the Bomb still held the lead at the quarter pole. Making the race’s third turn into the stretch, Verstappen swung six wide, Red Knight was in the three path, and the two of them picked off fading rivals.

Another Mystery (17-1), who moved from last place into fifth on the backstretch, tried to split horses racing to the finish, but he was no match for the top two. He came in third, two lengths behind the winner, who was named for Formula One driver Max Verstappen.

Channel Maker (6-1) pressed the pace throughout before finishing fourth. Then came Tiz the Bomb, post-time favorite Howe Street (2-1), Rising Empire (9-2) and Value Engineering (3-1).

The winning time was 2:29.28 on turf rated good. The early fractions were 24.68, 49.69, 1:14.93 and 1:40.00. Verstappen paid $34.30, $12.50 and $6.64; Red Knight $8.22 and $5.50; and Another Mystery $7.20.

Going into this week, 164 Turfway shippers had won 10 times during the current Keeneland meet for a strike rate of only 6 percent. That, however, was comparable to the 7 percent for horses coming from Fair Grounds dirt and turf and better than the 3 percent for starters who had raced most recently at Churchill Downs, mostly on dirt.

Maybe Turfway’s reputation comes from expectations being lowered because it has just the synthetic track for its wintertime races. Whatever the case, Walsh took a broader view of the trend in applying it to Verstappen.

“He’s a horse who can go on the turf. He can go on the Polytrack,” he said. “There’ll be a lot of options for him along the way. Hopefully, he’s a horse we’ll have around for years to come.”

Walsh said he was not looking past the Elkhorn for a race to target.

“This has been our target for a while,” he said. “Quietly we’ve kind of been thinking of this all winter. If things went right at Turfway, we were always going to come here and see if he was going to be good enough.”