SARATOGA SPRINGS – The Grade 1, $600,000 Whitney Handicap, which will be run here today for the 73rd time, is a special race for trainer H. James Bond. A lifelong resident of upstate New York, he won it with Will’s Way two years ago and said, “I could have flown off the top of the grandstand that day.”
This evening Bond will be flying high again when the photo-finish camera shows the 007 stable’s Behrens holding off the late charge of Victory Gallop to win the Whitney by a neck.
The next-to-last race in the “NTRA Champions on Fox” series for older horses, the Whitney will be televised live on Fox from 5-6 p.m. with post time set for 5:38.
Behrens, the leading contender for Horse of the Year, has had a roller-coaster career. The 5-year-old son of Pleasant Colony was a standout at 3, losing the Travers by a nose, then winning the $1 million Pegasus by 53/4 lengths.
But then he went wrong in the Breeders’ Cup and after four subpar races as a 4-year-old Bond put him on the shelf to recuperate from leg problems.
“The owners showed a lot of patience and gave him the time off he needed,” Bond said. Off six months, Behrens returned last January to run second in the Broward and Donn handicaps at Gulfstream Park, then won the Gulfstream Park Handicap by 2 lengths.
He hasn’t lost since, taking the Oaklawn, Massachusetts and Suburban handicaps to make it four in a row. The only close call came in the MassCap when it took him the length of the stretch to get by Running Stag.
“I almost blew that one,” Bond said. “I told Jorge (jockey Jorge Chavez) to stay right with Real Quiet the whole way. I didn’t think at the time Running Stag was the horse he is.”
Running Stag ran away with the Brooklyn Handicap in his next start while Real Quiet came back to win the Hollywood Gold Cup.
Behrens and Victory Gallop are co-highweights at 123 pounds in the Whitney, but Behrens has several factors in his favor. One is the homecourt advantage, as he’s been stabled at Saratoga since May. (Although in his one start over the track Victory Gallop was second by a nose in the Travers.)
Also, whereas Victory Gallop has one style of running – he drops far back early, then comes with a rush down the stretch – Behrens has tactical early speed.
To keep Behrens honest, Victory Gallop’s trainer Elliott Walden has entered a “rabbit,” Connecting Terms, to run as fast as he can, as far as he can, early in the race. The idea is that Behrens will expend energy chasing Connecting Terms, softening him up for Victory Gallop’s late run.
But the rabbit doesn’t bother Bond. “I’d rather have a horse in front of me,” he said.
One other edge that Behrens could have is that Victory Gallop ran last March in the Dubai World Cup, finishing third. Several horses who’ve made the long trek to the Middle East for that race – Cigar, Silver Charm and Behrens himself last year – returned in less-than-peak form.
“We understood the possibility he may not come back that well,” Walden said. “But we learned some things from the horses that went before and that helped him get back to where he was. “
