Wise Dan Back to Jogging on Track
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It got quiet at Keeneland with the end of the spring meet, as attentions shifted to Churchill Downs and the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I). So few noticed when Amy LoPresti headed down the horse path on a stable pony April 25, accompanied by a long-striding chestnut.
Wise Dan is back.
The 8-year-old son of Wiseman's Ferry was cleared for light training April 24 by Dr. Larry Bramlage at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital near Lexington. With exercise rider Damien Rock aboard the following morning, he jogged on the Keeneland training track accompanied by the pony.
His first trip to the track was his first since being sidelined with a non-displaced fracture at the bottom of the cannon bone of his right front fetlock, announced last Oct. 13.
"Dr. Bramlage says everything is looking good and healing well," trainer Charlie LoPresti said. "We'll start jogging him every other day for 30 days, recheck him, and hopefully we'll be able to go right on (training). Dr. Bramlage is happy with his progress. We're going to be real careful with him, keep him with the pony, and jog him that way. When it gets around the 24th of May, we'll check him again and hopefully we can start getting more jogs and gallops in."
Wise Dan, a six-time Eclipse Award-winner and two-time Horse of the Year who twice won the Breeders' Cup Mile (gr. IT), could still target this year's Breeders' Cup at Keeneland. Between his jog days, he'll tack-walk and visit the round pen as he has done in his recovery since coming back to LoPresti's Rice Road barn at the end of February.
"It all depends on what Dr. Bramlage says, but if everything went right and we had him going really good by the middle of June or the first of July, we'd probably have a fighting chance to get a race in him end of August or beginning of September," LoPresti said.
Wise Dan, bred by owner Morton Fink from the Wolf Power mare Lisa Danielle, has taken 11 grade I races in his 23 wins and finished second twice from 31 starts, good for earnings of $7,552,920. The Kentucky-bred was named Horse of the Year in 2013 and 2012, and swept the titles for champion turf male and champion older male in both of those seasons as well. Last year Wise Dan won three grade I races and a grade II event despite having his season interrupted by colic surgery.
"Saturday he was awesome," LoPresti said. "He looked like old Wise Dan with his neck bowed, striding out really good, happy to be back. The biggest thing is, he's going to have a good ankle regardless of what we do. If we run him or don't run him, his life is going to be perfect.
"We're doing a good job with him and he's in really good shape. He's in a very good place, I can tell you that."