Thirty -five years ago, on the morning of the Kentucky Derby, a youthful Ian Wilkes would say to someone who would listen to the fact that it could not be beaten in an unspeakable way this afternoon to conquer the roses. Although the 24-year-old Australia had only worked for Carl Nafzger for a low time, Wilkes' skills as a training driver had impressed his boss enough to secure the seat on the coach's first Kentucky start. The active mating was exactly what needed indefinite to cross the finish line for the first Saturday in May 1990.
Two derbies later, after achieving a second win with Street Sense in 2007, the duo is back on Racing's largest stage – this time with Wilkes at the barn of the barn as a trainer – with Burnham Square for the 151st Kentucky Derby from Woodford Reserve. Although Nafzger, 84, cannot be in the barn that it has been in recent years, the Hall of Famer remains an omnipresent member of Wilkes' life and with the daily run of his stable.
“He is my quarterback on Monday morning,” Wilkes joked. “He tells me what I did wrong on the weekend. We have a father-son relationship, we talk every day.
“He watched [Burnham Square’s final Derby work April 26 at Churchill Downs] with me. He will come to the derby and see it with me what is great, I love to have him there. “
Nafzger went to the half -mood in 2006, apart from horses that belonged to the long -standing customer James Tafel, the owner of Street Sense, and transferred to Wilkes, his then assistant, through a majority of his barn. One of these customers was Janis Whitham from Whitham's full blood, the owner and breeder of Burnham Square.
“[Janis Whitham and her son Clay] I've been in the barn for a long time, “said Wilkes. She is priceless. She is an icon for me and an icon of the game. She is a Marylou Whitney; it belongs in the same category.”
Burnham Square is a son of Scat Daddy Mare Linda, who campaigned by the Whithams and was achieved in the wife Revere Stakes in Churchill Downs under Wilkes' concern in 2016.
There are still remains of Nafzger's influence in Churchill Barn 26. Leather racing facilities with golden forehead and nose bands hang in the tack room, and horses are given a bathroom and can rest in their stands after the morning exercise instead of being used by a 20-minute waste. Long before the first sentence goes on the way to the route, horses are stretched by training drivers and foremen in their stands, which are convinced of a carrot, since both Nafzger and Wilkes firmly concern the chiropractic of the horses and often adapt a horse themselves.
“And acupuncture,” said Wilkes. “I love acupuncture; it really helps me to diagnose a horse.”
Wilkes, however, primarily said among the lessons that he observed from his mentor, “always watching the horse. They tell them everything. They don't lie; we have only misunderstood them.”
Wilkes compared the Burnham Square with a uncepted sense that both horses “needed a lot of race” as a key to their development. Unbridled raced ten times before his derby victory in 1990 and lost his last preparation in Keeland's Toyota Blue Grass Stakes, a race Burnham Square, who won on April 8. Burnham Square will take the seventh start of his career on May 3rd.
Wilkes praised Nafzger's ability to bring a goal to zero to ensure that a horse is climaxed on the massive day. While Nazfger's barns do not break percentage records of the victory, the horses of the former coach had an uncanny talent for the most vital thing. Unbridled lost his next four attempts after his derby victory until he brought together the pieces at the beginning of the season and achieved a dazzling victory over older horses this autumn -Breeders' Cup classic.
“Carl is very good at showing a horse for a race,” said Wilkes. “Even if the race is away for months. It is good at concentrating on this main goal and this horse in a certain race is getting better and better to achieve. He is very good at it.”
The Burnham Square was the figurehead of a horse that came to itself at the right time. At the beginning of his career due to a stubborn setting on the farm, the “Plain Bay”, as Wilkes calls him, his first start for 150,000 US dollars last October. It took two more starts and the addition of blinkers for the gelding to find the circle of the winner in a striking nine-length ram in Florida. From there, Burnham Square climbed the ladder in every start to win the field to win the Holy Bull Stakes of class 3, to achieve a fourth place in the Coolmore fountain of youth missions and then overcome the traffic lawyers in order to gather on an electrifying number of points in the blue grass.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_quwc4l3n8o
“Burnham Square needs race,” said Wilkes. “He can work well, but he makes too many mistakes in a race and you don't want to make mistakes on the first Saturday in May [Saturday]And he is ready to go. I am tacitly confident in him. “
Nafzger called Burnham Square's last derby training, a Solo Five Furlong parade in: 59.20, “Perfect” and as the son of Liams card a living “candidate” in the derby. The gelding will break from Post 9 with the Kentucky Derby winner of the Kentucky Derby Brian Hernandez Jr..
“But as I always say, there are 20 horses in the race, you only have to beat 19,” said Nafzger with a smile.
Nafzger recently told a story in which an owner asked him, the unbridled unbridled – had trained him or Wilkes.
“I said that is what I want to know was I or Ian? I'm not sure,” said Nafzger. “I don't know, maybe I learned from [Wilkes]. My first derby winner came in the same year in which he did. “
