Tapiture Makes Winning Look Easy

Tapiture Makes Winning Look Easy at the 2013 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes

On November 30th at the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes at Churchill Downs, Tapiture beat out Laddie Boy for the win. Tapiture captured a 4 ¼ length win for $175,000 in the Grade 2 race.

Although Tapiture only had a 3rd place finish racing at Churchill on October 27th of this year, where he tired out at the end, Tapiture proved himself at the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes. Tapiture was able to have a key moment when he entered the far turn and quickly moved from fifth place to second place. Tapiture was able to track Laddie Boy through the far turn and then took the lead in six furlongs, finishing the rest of the race with an easy victory.

Tapiture’s jockey, Ricardo Santana, Jr. was able to take Taptiture to his first Churchill graded stakes win. Santana said about Tapiture “I loved my horse today. I thought I had a big chance. My horse had run three times already and he’s learning. I had a lot of confidence in my horse. When I asked him he finished really good.”

Tapiture completed the 1 1/16 miles in 1:43.51 on a fast track. This was the second Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes win for Tapiture’s trainer Steve Asmussen, who said of the race “It was pretty crowded going into the first turn, I really liked the way he handled and got good position. Ricardo rode him really well.”

Steve Asmussen added, “We had planned on running him in a maiden race at the beginning of the meet as a prep for this. It didn’t go as planned, but he came out of it good, trained really well and just stayed the course. It’s awfully fun to have another nice homebred for the Winchells.”

Tapiture will begin is three-year-old campaign at the Fair Grounds.

This Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes win and the third place finish in the Iroquois gives Tapiture twelve points going into the 2014 Kentucky Derby.

Laddie Boy came in second and Awesome Sky came in third rounding out the top three.

In related news, Trainer Pat Byrne decided to sit Almost Famous out and scratched Sandford Racing’s two-year-old after the colt suffered a minor hoof bruise that resulted in a small infection.

In a press release shortly before the Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes Patrick Byrne stated, “So we’ve got a horse that’s not a 100 percent and we’ve decided we can’t take a risk and run him. It’s just bad timing, but unfortunately that’s the game. It’s a timing thing, the bottom line is it’s a timing thing. It’s the kind of thing that happens all the time. If it happened last week or next week, we’d be fine.”

2013 Kentucky Jockey Club Results and Payouts
6 Tapiture, $8.60 to Win, $4.60 to Place, $3.20 to Show
7 Laddie Boy, $19.20 to Place, $8.20 to Show
4 Awesome Sky, $5.20 to Show
Also ran: 10 – Buck Magic , 5 – Notability , 8 – Arctic Slope , 9 – Dobra Historia , 2 – Culprit , 3 – Mygalsal
Scratched horses: Almost Famous (Trainer)

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