Old Pro Pants On Fire Having Best Year Yet

Every morning after training at Santa Anita Park, Kelly Breen may be found accompanying an old campaigner on an old dirt oval outside Barn 89.

Around and around they go, Breen's hand steady on the shank, Pants On Fire striding along. The rhythms of the racetrack come natural to these two, veteran racehorse and seasoned horseman. So when Pants On Fire came back as a 6-year-old with one of his best seasons yet, his connections had to figure—why not take a shot at the big-time again?

"For whatever reason, he's just doing well this year," said Breen, who also has Stonetastic for Stoneway Farm in the DraftKings Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint (gr. I). "I'm not sure if it's because he's a 6-year-old now and I've finally got his number, but he's doing awfully well and he looks great."

Pants On Fire is the Louisiana Derby (gr. II) winner of 2011 who races for George and Lori Hall, one of their first homebred successes. That Louisiana Derby score came more than three years and 21 starts ago, with several rest periods in-between. But the Jump Start   runner who will contest the Dirt Mile (gr. I) on Oct. 31 has frequently delivered, winning stakes as a 3-year-old and 4-year-old, at 5, and at 6. He even set a stakes record in the one-mile Ack Ack Handicap (gr. III) last September at Churchill Downs, taking the one-turn event in 1:33.78.

This year Pants On Fire has finished no worse than third, with a win and two seconds among his four starts. Unraced until July, he was a game third in the Monmouth Cup (gr. II) and then followed up with runner-up finishes in the Aug. 17 Philip H. Iselin (gr. III) at Breen's summer base of Monmouth Park and in the Sept. 5 Left Bank Stakes at Belmont Park.

"We were contemplating going back to Churchill for a repeat in the Ack Ack this year, but the race happened to come up at Belmont instead and we didn't have to ship, we were in our own backyard," Breen said.

Pants On Fire stamped his ticket to the Breeders' Cup with a powerful 2 1/4-length victory in the Sept. 20 Wild and Wonderful Stakes at Hollywood Casino at Charles Town Races, drawing clear in the final sixteenth of the seven-furlong event under a hand ride from jockey Paco Lopez.

"It was great to see him after he had won the race at Charles Town because he came back to Monmouth Park and he was still sharp; he was walking around the shed row strutting his stuff," Breen said. "It was nice and invigorating at the same time, because there he is at 6 saying 'Hey, I've still got it.' We weren't going to come here with Pants on Fire if we didn't think we had a shot."

Breen, who took out his trainer's license in 1992, said having the horse in his barn over a length of time has allowed him to learn pretty much everything there is to know about this contender. 

"You have him from a baby and you see what works and what doesn't," he said. "You do different things with different horses until it works. Maybe now I'm training him a little bit differently because he's older. But he's changed a little bit over the years, too. He matured from last year to this year, and you've seen it in his races, which are a little bit better."

Pants On Fire ran seventh in the 2013 Dirt Mile after chasing the leaders four wide into the first turn.

"The track was just playing fast and we hooked into a horse like (winner) Goldencents   who has speed and went extremely fast on the front end and they didn't come back," Breen said. "So far from what I've seen here at Santa Anita this year, the surface is playing like a more fair racetrack, and I hope it doesn't change going up to this weekend.

"Even going into the Dirt Mile last time we knew, going by the previous races, that speed was holding exceptionally well and it wasn't our kind of track. You're doing a last-minute huddle in the paddock and you're saying 'Paco, what do you think?' and Paco says, 'I do what you want,' and it doesn't end up favorable. But if the track stays like how it is right now, I feel pretty good."

Pants On Fire has had some interesting adventures throughout his career, including a ninth-place finish in the 2011 Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (gr. I). He has been given plenty of time to recover from issues—he bled quite a bit in the Derby despite running on Lasix, for instance, but returned to win the Pegasus Stakes (gr. III) at Monmouth that July.

He went to the sidelines from a fifth in the Haskell Invitational (gr. I) on July 31 of 2011 to March 3 of 2012, when he won a Gulfstream Park allowance in his first start off the layoff. He was rested again after winning the Skip Away Stakes at Monmouth on May 26 of 2013, not coming back until November of that year.

Last December he made the long trip to run in the Japan Cup Dirt (Jpn-I) at Hanshin, but finished 16th. It was his final start until the Monmouth Cup this July.

"We might have had a rough trip going over to Japan but the time off did him well after and it just seems like he's settled down," Breen said. "It was just like he grew up after that trip. I don't know if it was so many hours on a plane or everything else—he used to be a little bit energetic at times but he's become a more mellow horse as he's gotten older."

Perhaps one of the tricks to Breen's success in 2014 with his Dirt Mile contender is the spacing of works and races. Pants On Fire tuned up for his upcoming race with a handy four-furlong move in :46 flat on Oct. 18 at Monmouth, fastest of 22 at the distance. He did not breeze over the Santa Anita track in preparation for his Breeders' Cup bid.

"He had such a fast workout two weeks ago at Monmouth Park; we worked him over a somewhat dead track and knowing him he did work a little too fast," the trainer said. "I might let him just stretch his legs here and go a little quarter-mile, but that's part of the difference in training him. His previous workouts have been a little more spaced out, and we were racing him instead of working him. He's fit, so rather than knock him out for some reason, I'll keep him sharp. That's what's been working for him this year."