Espinoza Showing the Right Touch
BALTIMORE — A year ago, the first time he ever rode in the Belmont Stakes, Victor Espinoza was a distant second to Point Given with A P Valentine.
Point Given was trained by Bob Baffert, but in three weeks, Espinoza will have Baffert on his side. He’ll be riding War Emblem, the Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner, on a day when he’s in a position to earn $560,000 with a Belmont win. That would be the jockey’s 10% share of the $600,000 winning purse and the $5-million Triple Crown bonus.
Espinoza, who’ll be 30 on Thursday, will rattle those numbers around later. “It’s Bob’s job to get the horse ready for the next one,” Espinoza said after winning his first Preakness. “I just want to take some time and enjoy this.”
Espinoza’s first Preakness resulted in a sixth-place finish with the longshot Hugh Hefner in 2000. Last year, when Baffert pulled him off Congaree after a third-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, Espinoza picked up the mount on A P Valentine and finished second to Point Given here.
“This horse is getting better and better,” said Espinoza of War Emblem, whom he rode for the first time in the Derby. He never hit War Emblem with his whip at Churchill Downs, but on Saturday at Pimlico he went to his stick 10 times with the right hand as the near-black colt fought off Proud Citizen and then Magic Weisner in the Preakness.
“When I broke from the gate, I got bumped a little,” Espinoza said. “But I wasn’t worried about that. I just focused on my horse. When the other horse [Menacing Dennis] took the lead, my horse got really aggressive. He wanted nobody to take his position. He wanted to be in control of everybody else.”
Baffert gave Espinoza the mount on War Emblem after the colt was bought 23 days before the Derby.
“I told Victor not to use the whip in the Derby, but he was on his own this time,” Baffert said. “When he hit him, the horse re-broke. Victor’s got this horse figured out now.”
Magic Weisner, who almost caught War Emblem in the last sixteenth of a mile, had never run in a graded stake before the Preakness. The Maryland-bred gelding, who’s owned and trained by Nancy Alberts, had won six of 10 starts going in and was being ridden by Richard Migliore for the first time. At 45-1, second longest shot on the board, Magic Weisner was beaten by three-quarters of a length.
“If you had told me this morning that I’d finish second in the Preakness, I’d have signed the papers,” Migliore said. “But now I’m kind of disappointed, because we came so close. This horse is like a barroom brawler, and you can never count him out. I was really just hoping to get a check [finish in the first four]. At the head of the stretch, I was ecstatic, thinking I might get third. But then I thought I had a shot at second, and then I thought we were really going to get there.”
Jerry Bailey, aboard Medaglia d’Oro, knew early that this wasn’t going to be his colt’s day.
“I tried to run through a gap halfway down the backside,” Bailey said. “But I didn’t have enough horse to make it. You don’t get a very good feeling when that happens.”
*
In other stakes at Pimlico, Snow Ridge, ridden by Mike Smith, won the $100,000 Maryland Breeders’ Cup Handicap by 73/4 lengths; Strut The Stage outfinished Del Mar Show in the $200,000 Citgo Dixie; Tenpins won the $100,000 William Donald Schaefer Handicap; True Direction win the $100,000 Hirsch Jacobs Stakes; Chris McCarron was aboard Quidnaskra for her win in the $125,000 Gallorette Handicap; Mr O’Brien won the $100,000 Woodlawn; and Sarava was best in the $100,000 Sir Barton.
