Lone Star's Asmussen Saddles Curlin to Preakness Victory Over Derby Champ Street Sense
GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas (Saturday, May 19, 2007) – Lone Star Park’s all-time leading trainer Steve Asmussen won the second leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown on Saturday when Curlin headed Kentucky Derby champ Street Sense at the finish line in Saturday’s 132nd Preakness Stakes at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Md.
The victory was the biggest win in Asmussen’s 22-year career as a trainer. “Every time we led him over, we thought we were leading the right horse over,” said a jovial Asmussen about 2 ½ hours after the race via telephone. “I thought Street Sense was the deserving winner of the Derby and we were simply third. In the Preakness, now everybody else feels how we always felt about this horse.”
Curlin, who suffered his first loss while third in the Kentucky Derby, stumbled a bit at the start of the Preakness and was unhurried in the early stages of the 1 3/16-mile race. He closed the gap from the outside leaving the far turn and circled five-wide to reach contention approaching the quarter pole. The 3-year-old son of Smart Strike determinedly dug in under strong urging from jockey Robby Albarado and gamely fought past Street Sense who appeared to make a winning move in deep stretch.
Curlin, who equaled the Preakness Stakes record with a final time of 1:53.46 shared by Tank’s Prospect (1985) and Louis Quatorze (1996), improved his record to four wins in five starts. The $600,000 winner’s share of the purse boosted his earnings to $1,602,800. He paid $8.80 to win as the 3-1 second betting choice behind Street Sense, who was sent off as the 7-5 favorite.
“The one thing Curlin did in the Derby was never quit; he kept running,” Asmussen said. “Watching the race so far up the racetrack (near the top of the stretch) as I did today, the one thing I noticed was that Robby had to guide him a lot around the turn. Once he was able to go to his right lead (leg) and drop his head and apply some pressure on him, he responded. I think it was a great victory in a classic against a very good field in a great time. There won’t be any questions about him from this step forward.”
The victory gave Asmussen some solace. Just six days earlier, Asmussen’s grandmother Helen (his father Keith’s mother) died of kidney failure at age 83. Two weeks earlier, she was running the tack shop at the family’s El Primero Training Center in Laredo, Texas.
“It’s brought to light what’s truly important and what my family means to me and how special it was for my mom (Marilyn), dad, Julie and the boys to be able to be with me here today,” Asmussen said. “She was definitely in our thoughts. She helped us put an emphasis on family.”
Asmussen, 41, resides just minutes from Lone Star Park in Arlington, Texas with his wife Julie and three sons, Keith James, Darren Scott and Erik Mark. He has won 665 races at Lone Star Park – more than any other trainer in track history – and eight of the last nine local Thoroughbred training titles. He’s also been the national leading trainer in races won in three of the last five years, including a record 555 races in 2004.
Asmussen said Curlin would fly back to Kentucky on Sunday morning and be pointed to the June 9 Belmont Stakes. Asmussen planned to oversee the training of his Churchill Downs string on Monday and Tuesday and return to Texas on either Wednesday or Thursday.
[ATTENTION MEDIA: Lone Star Park will host a media opportunity with Steve Asmussen in the coming days when he returns to Lone Star Park. More details to follow.]
Asmussen will partake in a special autograph session at Lone Star Park on Memorial Day, Monday, May 28 when the racetrack hosts its ninth annual Lone Star Million, which features six stakes races that total $1 million, highlighted by the Grade III, $400,000 Lone Star Park Handicap. “This is a big deal and I want Lone Star Park to be apart of it,” Asmussen said.
Darren Fleming, Asmussen’s chief assistant trainer at Lone Star, was part of the 11,832 in attendance that watched the Preakness at Lone Star. “It was awesome,” said Fleming, who watched the race on the track’s JumboTron with his wife Kerry and daughters Allie, McLain and Drew. “I was the one rolling around on the grass! The girls were in tears, especially Allie because I took her with me to the Derby. This horse is something special. He’s such a long-striding horse and has so many gears. It’s unbelievable. I can’t wait for the Belmont.”
Attendance on Preakness Stakes Day at Lone Star was up 4.9% from the 11,280 on hand in 2006. As of 7 p.m., total wagers in the building exceeded $2.3 million, which was already 10% up from last year’s total of $2,074,031, and betting was to continue well into the night with 21 racetracks still exporting their signals to Lone Star.
Despite one fewer live race this year (11 races compared to 12 in 2006), wagering on Lone Star’s races was up, too. The on-track live handle grew 13.3% from $677,875 in 2006 to $768,144 this year. Off-track betting on Lone Star’s races totaled $1,874,024, a 28.8% increase from last year’s $1,454,662. Together, they totaled $2,642,168, which was a 23.9% jump from the $2,132,537 a year ago.
On the Preakness Stakes, the Lone Star Park crowd wagered $534,474 on the race, which was a 6.9% increase from last year’s $499,996. More than $1.5 million had been bet on simulcasts on-track as of 7 p.m.
Much like the Preakness, Lone Star Park’s featured $50,000 Ford Express Stakes showcased a thrilling stretch duel and a slim winning margin. Charles Fletcher’s Smoke Mountain, the 4-5 favorite trained by Cody Autrey, got up to beat 35-1 longshot Wheaton Home by a nose and gave jockey Ramsey Zimmerman his first Lone Star Park stakes win. The 4-year-old gelding ran six furlongs in 1:10.78 and paid $3.80 to win.
Live racing at Lone Star Park continues Sunday with a nine-race card that begins at 1:35 p.m. CT.
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