7/4 (LRC): Great Lady M (G2), Los Al Derby (G3)
 

Uncle Chuck is an exciting horse. Should win this one and become the second choice for the Travers.

Kind of amusing your first pre race opinion in what has to be years if ever is on a 2/5 in a 4 horse field.

There comes a time when each of us has to take a stand.

Lol that made me laugh

That was funny. I like you today. You saw Fit to Fight and said how good it was to see the famed silks of Rokeby Stables and Mack Miller. I know that made you think of his greatest horse, Java Gold. I know that made you think of me.

I believe it's called clockwork.

Is Phil going to appear soon and pretend he’s some kind of tough guy? That would make this day complete.

Java Gold never occurred to me. Honestly. Sea Hero did.

Understandable since he was a Derby winner. Miller had said Java Gold was his best horse but of course, that was before Sea Hero came along. I don't think that changed his thinking though.

Red Ransom was the one that got him (and/or Paul Mellon) to actually keep a horse in full training over the winter with an eye towards the Kentucky Derby rather than letting down in Aiken.

Of course, that didn't go very well and to read Andy Beyer's account of the affair one might think that Miller intentionally eighty-sixed that horse's Triple Crown aspirations (left the horse with an assistant, entered the horse in February against older horses, fired the jockey for working "too fast", then said he hadn't train the horse enough when it got beat at 2-5 a couple of weeks later).

He abandoned Sea Hero in the winter, too, leaving him with Scotty Schulhofer and tried to keep the horse on the grass after a series of drubbings but was overruled by the owner. Perhaps only the inane program utilized by the Animal Kingdom people was more "innovative" in producing a Derby victory...

You're so full of great anecdotes. Love your posts. I remember Red Ransom. I was at the track the day he broke his maiden and set the track record. I thought he'd become a star.

I'm wondering about another horse from around that same period. I figure if anyone would know, either you or Andy would. Horse was named Grand Gala. I only remember a couple of starts but nothing else. Do you remember that horse? I want to say it was a Phipps horse but I'm not sure.

It was a Phipps filly (they also later used the name again). Never heard of her, but there was this blurb about her in an Easy Goer article right before the 1989 Kentucky Derby:

Grand Gala, a talented 3-year-old filly who was being pointed for the Kentucky Oaks, the day before the Derby, hurt a knee while running at Keeneland recently and underwent arthroscopic surgery for removal of a bone chip Thursday afternoon.

She didn't make it back and there are no listed foals so something(s) went amiss.