Life in Shadows Could Bring Collected to the Forefront

The murmurs and cameras that surrounded Barn BB on the Del Mar backside an hour earlier had dissipated, leaving in its place an uncannily calm backdrop for the horse best known for the disruption he caused.

With only a lone lensman lingering to capture his frame, the chestnut colt walked without fanfare toward the gap for his morning of training in preparation for the $6 million question he'll aim to answer Nov. 4. While his heralded stablemate had every eye trained on his distinctive blue-gray self as he jogged around the track before sunup,  the horse with the most recent bragging rights galloped in relative obscurity, save for a smattering of observers wondering who that was in the neon green saddle towel with the blue hind wraps.

It's not like Collected hasn't done his part to draw attention his way. That stablemate of his? The one with the Eclipse Award, the four grade 1 victories, and largest bankroll in North American racing history? He beat him when the two met in the Aug. 19 TVG Pacific Classic (G1), when champion Arrogate was beaten a half-length over the very track and distance they will travel in Saturday's Breeders' Cup Classic (G1). 

It's not like that effort was a one-off good day for Speedway Stable's top runner. He is undefeated in four starts this season and in June delivered what hindsight reveals to be a shot across the bow, when he cantered to a 14-length victory in the Precisionist Stakes (G3). The biggest concerns of his biggest rivals are obstacles he has already cleared. Yet as he walked back to trainer Bob Baffert's shedrow the morning of Nov. 1, the 4-year-old colt might as well have been engulfed in shadow.

"I was talking to K.C. Weiner, my partner, the other morning, and he said 'How would you summarize the articles you've been reading?'. And I said, 'K.C., I would say in summary that Collected is coming in here under the radar screen,'" laughed Peter Fluor, who along with Weiner founded Speedway Stable three years ago. "That's fine. It's just great for us to be in the race. At least K.C. and I think he has a nice chance."

It speaks to the clout of defending Classic winner Arrogate and morning-line favorite Gun Runner that Collected can go about his Breeders' Cup preparations without the glare of the spotlight zeroing in on his every action.

In Collected's defense it has been easy to get blinded by the shine coming off the two glamour boys of the handicap ranks. Prior to his pair of stunning defeats this summer, Juddmonte Farms' Arrogate was being hailed as a demigod in the making following his breath-snatching, last-to-first win over Gun Runner in the March 25 Dubai World Cup Sponsored by Emirates Airline (G1)—his fourth straight grade 1 triumph. Since being bested by Arrogate that night at Meydan, Gun Runner has responded with a trio of grade 1 victories in the Stephen Foster Handicap, Whitney Stakes, and Woodward Stakes Presented by NYRA Bets, winning by a combined margin of 22 1/2 lengths.

Collected, meanwhile, didn't make his seasonal debut until April 1, after a freshening that followed a 3-year-old campaign that teased of brilliance. If Gun Runner is the steady force and Arrogate the meteoric hero, Collected is the promising recruit who very nearly flamed out, only to resurrect himself as the poster child for why his owners agreed against logic to get into this business to begin with.

"We've had a lot of good fortune," Fluor said. "We're just a couple of low-key owners who try and run it as a business but have fun. And we said, the minute we got in, that the minute we stop having fun with it, we're done."

It took little more than 10 minutes for Speedway Stable to come to fruition—concept wise, anyway.

Longtime friends Fluor and Weiner are also partners in the oil and gas exploration company Texas Crude Energy. Their fathers were involved together in the horse industry some 40 years earlier and, upon Fluor's urging, they decided three years ago to collectively pick up that torch and see if they could take their business acumen and have it translate into something priceless.

According to Fluor, he walked into Weiner's office and declared he had a proposal for him. He then warned his partner it was an idea that went against their usual practices.

"I said to him, 'You may want to do this with me. And if you do, you're probably crazy,'" recalled Fluor, whose father was a part owner in two-time Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe (G1) winner Alleged in the late 1970s. "I told him it makes absolutely no business sense. I explained it to him and ... he said, 'Sounds good to me.'

"And the whole conversation took about 12 minutes."

Having added the wisdom of bloodstock agents John Adger and Marette Farrell to the team, the Speedway vision officially took shape at the 2014 Fasig-Tipton November sale, when they purchased their first horse, Canadian champion Leigh Court, for $1 million. Where racing business plans go, theirs was a fairly straightforward one—focus on buying fillies with the residual value to build up a broodmare band. It's also one that has yielded quick returns, with Speedway campaigning grade 1 winners Hard Not to Like and Noted and Quoted, along with Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf (G1T) entrant Moon Dash.

At the 2015 Ocala Breeders' Sales March 2-year-olds in training auction, however, Farrell found herself blown away by a good-looking red colt with an elastic walk. By that point the Speedway team was looking for a male prospect with the intangibles necessarily to handle and thrive in Baffert's training regimen. Once the gavel fell in their favor at $170,000 for Hip 188, they had now ticked another box on the operation's fledging list of objectives.

"I'm European and obviously the walk is a big thing," Farrell said. "He had a big ground-eating walk—an easy way about him. I know the family really well and ... as soon as I liked him—because pedigree is a big thing for me—I then loved him.

"Everything worked. The physical and then the pedigree backed it up, to make you believe that he could be a great horse."

By the time Speedway celebrated its first anniversary, their boy was making inroads on the task of becoming the high-level talent every buyer who leaves a sales pavilion hopes they have. 

Six and a half-furlong sprints on the Santa Anita Park downhill turf aren't usually a launching for potential classic contenders and yet, just a few months after breaking his maiden at first asking down the hill in October of 2015, Collected signaled he was becoming just that, when he won the 2016 Sham Stakes (G3) in his first try on dirt. Three starts later he was touting himself in even stronger fashion with a four-length victory in the Lexington Stakes (G3) at Keeneland, an effort that earned him a trip to Baltimore the following month for a start in the 2016 Preakness Stakes (G1).

The elation amongst the Speedway crew for having an entrant in a Triple Crown race was juxtaposed by the reality of how daunting it is for a still-maturing sophomore to handle that kind of ask. Over a rain-soaked Pimlico Race Course main track, Collected never unleashed his trademark early speed and finished tenth behind winner Exaggerator , emerging with some wear and tear that needed tending to. He was given the rest of his 3-year-old season off, and was sent to Timber Town Stables near Lexington to let the bone bruising that was setting in heal.

He was also given a mental overhaul. Farrell sent the colt to reining horse trainer Mal McGuire for some lessons that just can't be taught while going left around a track.

"I'm a big believer in doing alternatives," Farrell said. "So I used Mal McGuire and I call it 'cowboy dressage.' Most of the really good horses I've been around have come from Mal first because ... they're under a stock saddle. They learn how to be a horse and use themselves properly, and I think that translates to the racetrack—how to take weight off their front end, how to use their back end. And Mal is very big into their minds—Collected's mind was always boiling over. He was not very patient.

"Mal had all kind of alternative means to help with that. He had a donkey, and Collected would get tied to the donkey, and that teaches them patience and how to deal with someone else being the boss.  I think the donkey was dragged around quite a few times, but that really crowned Collected. It put the finishing touches on everything else that was up to him before."

When Baffert saw pictures of his graded stakes-winning charge under a Western saddle, he asked Fluor if plans for a 4-year-old campaign had been abandoned in favor of gaining entry to the Houston rodeo. When he actually sent the colt out for his first start in 11 months, a 3 3/4-length victory in the Santana Mile Stakes April 1, he saw he had a new addition to his Murderers' Row of handicap horses. The previously one-dimensional speedster rated in fourth before he swept past rivals on the turn and showed off his gears in the lane.

"It's just maturity. He used to get really nervous and was always getting hot. That turnout really did him a lot of good," Baffert said. "I never really thought he could get a mile and a quarter, but he did (in the Pacific Classic). And the older speed horses get, the farther they can run. I always thought that. 

"I think the 1 1/4-miles—it's stretching him a little bit, it's stretching the rubber band—but it's stretching it for a lot of these horses. But he loves (Del Mar). He moves way up here."

The mornings Collected has spent at the picturesque venue this week have done little to dispel the notion that, if he gets beat in Saturday's 10-furlong test, it won't be because of any hiccups during the lead up.

If the Del Mar surface has indeed been Arrogate's Achilles' Heel, it has been Collected's ally in bringing out the best of his high-cruising speed. The crowds may have been content to follow others, but even casual eyes couldn't miss the effortless way Baffert's intra-barn giant slayer has skipped over the surface each morning.

As Collected cooled out at the barn Nov. 1, alongside fellow grade 1 winner, stablemate, and Classic entrant West Coast, the only murmurs to be heard came from workers in neighboring shedrows going about their routine. If his work this year in any indicator of what is to come, life in the background has only served to push Collected into the forefront.

"I feel really confident that he's going to run really tough," Baffert said. "If he won, I wouldn't be surprised."