Runhappy Gets Back to Work at Keeneland

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Runhappy Gets Back to Work at Keeneland
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Photo: Skip Dickstein
Runhappy, winning Breeders' Cup Sprint.

James McIngvale’s Runhappy, champion sprint male of 2015, made his first recorded work of the year a little after 5:30 a.m. Aug. 25 at Keeneland. For trainer Laura Wohlers the 4-year-old son of Super Saver   went three furlongs in :34 4/5, a half-mile in :46, and five furlongs in :59 after shipping across town from his base at the Kentucky Training Center.

"Today was a very good day," Wolhers said. "He went super. He looked like a machine out there. We had been doing few eighths at the training center that he’d been doing in :11 and it was getting hard to pull him up."

As for the early time for the work, Wohlers said: "We didn’t want it to be a big deal. If he has a group of people out to see him he starts to show off, so we wanted to go out early in the morning."

By 8:30 a.m., Runhappy had already been vanned back to the training center, spent time in his spa and had been turned out. Wohlers said he'd get his usual two to three hours of time outdoors before the temperatures ramped up.

Runhappy, who tore through the NYRA.com King’s Bishop Stakes (gr. I), the Stoll Keenon Ogden Phoenix Stakes (gr. III), TwinSpires.com Breeders’ Cup Sprint (gr. I), and Malibu Stakes (gr. I) last year has been slowed this year, most recently by a bone bruise on his right front cannon bone.

HAMMONDS: RUNHAPPY ON THE SHELF FOR 60 DAYS

The drill was the first recorded work for Runhappy since he went seven furlongs in 1:25 2/5 in preparation last Dec. 15 for the Malibu. Following that race he was turned out at McIngvale's farm in Texas for some time off before returning to Kentucky.

McIngvale and Wohlers (McIngvale's sister-in-law) have an ambitious schedule for Runhappy for the remainder of the year. They have always considered Runhappy more than a sprinter and their end goal for the year is the Nov. 5 Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile (gr. I) at Santa Anita Park. An ideal prep for that would be Churchill Downs' Ack Ack Handicap (gr. III) Oct. 1, Wohlers said.

Bred by Wayne, Gray, and Bryan Lyster, Runhappy is out of the Broken Vow   mare Bella Jolie. Runhappy, a $200,000 Keeneland September sale yearling, is 7-0-0 in eight starts and has earned $1,481,300.