Will Take Charge Fine After Travers Victory

Will Take Charge after winning the Travers Stakes on Aug. 24 (Photos courtesy Eclipse Sportswire).

D. Wayne Lukas may have expected a quiet morning the Sunday after his $1 million Travers Stakes victory with Will Take Charge, but it wasn’t to be. Many times throughout the morning, the Preakness/Travers winning trainer was interrupted for interviews with the press that had swarmed Saratoga for the “Midsummer Derby”.

"They keep coming in droves," Lukas joked. "That's a good thing."

Yesterday, Will Take Charge gave Lukas his first Travers win since 1995 when he beat pacesetting Moreno by a nose. It is the second major Grade 1 victory Lukas has won this year as he won the second leg of the Triple Crown with Oxbow. Oxbow is off for the rest of the year after injuring himself in the Haskell Invitational so his stablemate stepped up to win the summer’s most important 3-year-old race.

The task didn’t seem to be an imposition for Will Take Charge, who came out of the race in good shape.

"He's doing wonderful; really good," Lukas said. "I'm very pleased with that. He had great energy this morning, out grazing and feeling good, very good."

Will Take Charge was off the board in all three Triple Crown races but Lukas believes that as the colt has matured, he has been able to overcome obstacles that stopped him earlier in his career.
"His trips were compromised [during the Triple Crown]," Lukas said. "His style of running puts him in a position where he has to have some things go his way. As he's gotten older and more mature now, mentally and physically, he's able to overcome that stuff. Early on in his career, that was the thing that probably slowed him up."

Will Take Charge has two options after his victory, Lukas is pointing him at either the $1 million Pennsylvania Derby against horses in his own division or the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup against older males.

"One of them's a Grade 1 and very prestigious. If you were to win the Jockey Club, you'd go damn sure to the head of the division," Lukas said. "If you stay in your division, the million dollars is not necessarily bad, either. We'll weigh all the things. You get an extra week if you go to the Jockey Club, so that's also something."

In other Travers news:
Second placed Moreno’s gutsy performance was even more impressive as the sun rose over the Saratoga barns on Sunday morning. Trainer Eric Guillot revealed that the Ghostzapper gelding raced with an abscess near his throat that had developed last week. 

"That's an abscess that started Monday," said Guillot as he inspected the horse Sunday morning. "I think the worst day was yesterday. We started compressing it. We're good to go now, but I thought I was going to have to scratch on Monday. We don't know what caused it - I think an ingrown hair, maybe, or he jerked back on the chain. It got infected and went the wrong way. You don't want to pack it and work on it too hard and too fast. Yesterday, we iced it. I gave him a lot of anti-inflammatories."

Guillot said the abscess didn’t affect Moreno even though his blinker strap wrapped around the abscess. The abscess is being treated with a topical antibiotic at the moment and the plan is to head to the September 21 Pennsylvania Derby at Parx Racing.

Orb, who finished third in the Travers, is pointing to the Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park next month. The Travers was the Kentucky Derby winner’s first race back since taking a break from racing after the Belmont Stakes. Trainer Shug McGaughey was happy with the colt’s finish after Orb had a jockey change on Saturday morning when his regular jockey Joel Rosario was injured on Friday afternoon.

"I thought he ran a great race," said McGaughey. "He came to the paddock the way I wanted him to, and I thought he had running on his mind. I thought Jose rode him great. He was down on the inside the other two horses, and he couldn't get by Moreno, really, after that slow pace. I'm disappointed we didn't win, but I'm not disappointed in his effort one bit. I thought they did a terrific job with him."

Travers favorite Verrazano and Belmont Stakes winner Palace Malice both came out of the race in good shape according to trainer Todd Pletcher. However, it isn’t clear where the colts will go for their next starts.

"We're disappointed," Pletcher said. "Any time after a race, you don't only look at that race but their entire body of work. As far as their next starts, we have no firm plans. We'll wait a few days and talk it over with Mr. [Cot] Campbell and the other connections before we make any decisions."

Verrazano had no excuse for his seventh place finish, but Pletcher can’t be too upset with his career so far to date, "[Verrazano] is still 6-for-8 and a multiple Grade 1 winner," he said. "We're disappointed in yesterday's performance but we're not disappointed in the horse. I can't offer much excuse. I thought he was in a very good tactical position. [But] when Johnny [Velazquez] needed him to start picking it up around the half-mile pole, he just didn't have the response we were looking for."

However, Palace Malice did have an excuse when he was pinched out of the gate and had to sit in the back of the pack due to the mishap.

"[With Palace Malice], we weren't planning on being last going into the first turn behind a dawdling pace," Pletcher said. "I thought he had a winning race in him. Unfortunately, the start did not go well. Once that happened we were in a completely different spot than we anticipated being. Unfortunately, he came up a length short. For a number of reasons, the bad start was compromising. When you tack on the fact they didn't go very fast up front, I thought he ran a great race, considering all that."