Bullards Alley Gives Glyshaw First Graded Win

Trainer Tim Glyshaw called an audible May 21 at Churchill Downs, and it resulted in the first graded stakes victory of his career.

Glyshaw had planned to run Wayne Spalding and Faron McCubbins' Bullards Alley in the Louisville Handicap (gr. IIIT) only if was moved from the turf to dirt. The 1 1/2-mile stakes remained on the turf—and Bullards Alley raced and won.

"We entered with the idea of running main track only," Glyshaw said. "The owners wanted to give him a try, which I was a little apprehensive of because he's the best horse in our barn, we weren't going to know what type of shape the turf course would be in, and we didn't know what would happen with all the rain we got.

"At the end of the day I made a deal with the owners that I would call (jockey) Francisco (Torres) and tell him that if the horse doesn't like what it feels like and not handling it well to just get him home safe, but by all means if he's liking it to try and win. He had the worst of it; he was around three turns and was four-wide, but at the end of the day that was a good part of the track."

Bullards Alley, a 4-year-old Flower Alley gelding, had won an allowance race on the dirt at Churchill only nine days before the Louisville Handicap, which produced his first graded stakes victory. The gelding has earned $256,191 in 19 starts.

"It was asking a lot of him coming back in nine days," Glyshaw said. "Going into this race I told the owners that if he runs in this race, we aren't running him until July. Nine months to a year down the road, if we're in the same type of situation, at least we know that he's capable of doing it."

Glyshaw believes that Bullards Alley does his best running when going 1 1/2 miles.

 

"He just really likes that distance," Glyshaw said "The problem is there aren't that many races like that that are a mile-and-a-half on the dirt or turf. The biggest thing he has going for him is that he likes to run all day, but in the right situation he could probably win at a mile-and-a-sixteenth. A mile-and-a-half is great for him though, there are just few and far between options for that."

Glyshaw said Bullards Alley could race July 16 in either the Michael Schaefer Memorial or the Warrior Veterans, both $100,000 stakes at Indiana Grand Race Course. After that, the $600,000 Kentucky Turf Cup at Kentucky Downs and a dirt marathon stakes during the Breeders' Cup World Championships at Santa Anita Park are possible.

Glyshaw, who began training in 2004, has won 14 stakes in total and through May 23 had won 378 races.