Catching Up With Wilko

Wilko wins the 2004 Breeders' Cup Juvenile at odds of nearly 30-1. (Photos by HorsePhotos.com unless noted)
When Wilko entered the 2004 Bessemer Trust Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, he had just as much experience on the track as four of the horses running in the Breeders’ Cup Classic with 10 starts on his record.
Wilko had a new rider aboard for the Juvenile with Frankie Dettori, who had already won three Breeders’ Cup races in his career, and was trying dirt for the first time. None of this seemed to be a big worry for Wilko, who ran with the first flight of horses until the middle of the turn when he was shuffled back.
It looked like Wilko was defeated until Dettori angled him out and he found another gear in the stretch. He came back to draw even with that first group again before overtaking them and winning by ¾ length over Afleet Alex at odds of 28.30-to-1.
2004 BREEDERS’ CUP JUVENILE

Video courtesy of Breeders’ Cup World Championships
"I can't believe it. I mean the horse worked well on the dirt but we were just hoping to hit the board,” Dettori told the Blood-Horse. "He got a great jump but I got outpaced to the quarter pole. But they stopped so I pulled him out(side) straightaway."
With Paul Reddam buying 75 percent of Wilko a few weeks before the race, the decision was made to transfer him from Jeremy Noseda in England to Craig Dollase for an American campaign.
Just because Wilko had won the Juvenile didn’t mean he got to take the rest of the year off, ending the season with a third-place finish in the Hollywood Futurity behind Declan’s Moon and future Kentucky Derby winner Giacomo.
In all that season, Wilko raced 12 times with three wins and seven other on-the-board finishes for $934,074 in earnings.
Returning in the San Felipe to start his 3-year-old season, Wilko finished a well-beaten eighth in that race but proved that it was needed when coming just half a length from winning the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby in his final prep for the Kentucky Derby.
DETTORI CELEBRATES BREEDERS' CUP WIN

The Kentucky Derby didn’t go as planned for Wilko but he didn’t disgrace himself when finishing sixth in the race, helping make the decision to run him in the Preakness easier for connections. However, after a 12th place finish where he finished 35 lengths behind the winner his connections found a chip in his ankle.
Surgery was performed to remove the chip and he returned that December in the Larkspur Stakes at Golden Gate where he finished third by only a head to the winner.
Finishing third in two of his next three starts, Wilko shipped out of the country again in May of 2006 for a quick trip to Dubai, where he was transferred back into Noseda’s charge. In a big finish for the United States, Wilko finished third behind Brass Hat in the Dubai World Cup but when Brass Hat was disqualified he was bumped up to second and took home a $1.2 million check. While it wasn’t a win, it was Wilko’s most important finish since the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.
Staying in Noseda’s charge for one more race, Wilko made his first start in New York a little over two months later in the Metropolitan Handicap. But he didn’t have his closing kick and was only able to advance one spot from sixth to fifth at the finish of the race. Transferred to Mark Henning in New York, he made two more starts in the state before the season was called on him after less-than-desirable finishes and he was transferred back to Dollase for his final season.
Wilko made five starts in 2007, with his best finish being a third in an optional claiming race. He was retired that June after an eighth-place finish in the Hollywood Gold Cup and bought by Frank Stronach’s Adena Springs that fall to stand next to his sire Awesome Again in Florida for his first season.
“As a two turn proven son of Awesome Again, who we recognized early on was a great stallion in his own right, and out of an Indian Ridge mare (he offered) some bloodlines of multiple surface production on turf or dirt,” Cormac Breathnach, part of the team nominations stallions at Adena Springs Kentucky, said recently. “So he really embodied those characteristics that the Stronachs look for, which is durability and two-turn ability on dirt and outcross pedigree.”
As of Aug. 31, Wilko has 194 foals of racing age with three of those being graded stakes winners and four others being stakes winners. His foals are topped by the late Happy My Way, Sheza Smoke Show and Venezuelan Group 1 winner Don Carlos R.

WILKO AT STUD

Photo courtesy of Adena Springs
Wilko moved to Canada for the 2011 breeding season, a move that proved to be smart for the stallion as he has been one of the top 10 Canadian sires over the last few years.
“You always try to put the stallions where they best fit in terms of the market, what the breeders are looking for and where their strengths are best utilized,” Breathnach said. “It’s often the case where you move horses a couple of times in their career but I think he’s established now that he’s had success in Canada, he’s had success in the eastern U.S. with horses like Happy My Way and then a few very good horses out in California like Sheza Smoke Show and Qiaona and a couple others. He seems to fit that market [in Canada] and gets solid support so that will be likely where he’ll stay for the foreseeable future.”
One of two 2004 Breeders’ Cup winners by Awesome Again (the other being Classic winner Ghostzapper), like his sire he is even-tempered but can be tough at times. Breathnach credits that toughness as one of the reasons he was successful on the track.
“He’s a lot like his sire Awesome Again. He’s a very level, even-minded, even-tempered kind of horse but he’s got that toughness and that grit that Awesome Again has,” Breathnach said. “He’s not a very big horse and I think he ran 12 times as a juvenile and he won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at (28.30-to-1) in his first start on dirt in his 11th start as a 2-year-old. So he really had just a lot of constitution and that tough personality that allowed him to excel over the long haul as a juvenile and he still has those attributes. He’s an easy horse to be around but he’s the type that doesn’t go down without a fight, he’s got a lot of grit.”
Wilko’s future looks bright with the stallion breeding over 70 mares last year in Alberta, where he spent a season before moving back to Adena Springs’ Canadian base in Ontario this year.