| |
 A Closer Look Antley executes strategy, and Charismatic comes through
Posted: Saturday May 01, 1999 08:11 PM
By Jon Scher, CNN/SI LOUISVILLE -- On your morning commute, you find yourself in bumper-to-bumper traffic. What are your options? You could get aggressive, stepping on the accelerator and then slamming on the brakes, maybe burning out your clutch or wearing out your transmission in the process. Or you could take it easy, hang back a bit, watch for an opening and then make your move. Trainer D. Wayne Lukas and jockey Chris Antley took the latter approach in the 125th Kentucky Derby on Saturday afternoon. The result: Charismatic, a 30-1 longshot once so unwanted that anyone could have claimed him on the equine equivalent of the waiver wire for $62,500, won the race. "I've probably never misjudged a horse so much early on as I did this one," said Lukas, who thought the chestnut colt was fat and lazy. "It turns out he's a big, fat horse who likes to run." Lukas didn't misread the Derby. Earlier in the day, as 151,051 people partied and bet money on the first seven races, he met with Antley in a dark room under the main grandstand at Churchill Downs to plot strategy. Essentially, it boiled down to this: with 19 horses in the race, and with Charismatic starting 16th, on the outside, don't try to do too much too soon. "I liked the way Chris looked me in the eye and said, We'll get it done," Lukas said. "Wayne told me to try to stay in the second tier of horses," Antley said. "Since we started outside, we had to hope we didn't get hung out too far wide. We got the chance to sit in that second tier. He was five or six deep down the backside, but Wayne assured me that fitness was not a problem, and that this horse would run the whole [last] half-mile." Indeed, at the three-quarter-mile mark in the 1 1/4-mile race, Charismatic was seventh, but within striking distance of Valhol, a horse that basically conked out at that point and wound up 12th. At the one-mile mark, Charismatic had moved up to third, 1 1/2 lengths behind his stablemate, Cat Thief. (Lukas didn't say if he gave Cat Thief's jockey, Mike Smith, the same advice he gave Antley. But despite fading a bit down the stretch, Cat Thief finished third, giving Lukas two of the top three.) Still running all out, as Lukas predicted, Charismatic took over the race in the middle of the stretch and held off a charging Menifee at the wire. "I really feel good about the next one or two races," Lukas said. "This race might actually be a little short for him today. This might be a Belmont horse." Why not? The traffic is even worse in New York.
| |||||||||||||||||||||
Copyright © 1999 CNN/SI. A Time Warner Company. Terms under which this service is provided to you.
| |||||||||||||||||||||
