Forego Stakes (Grade 1)

STEVE Asmussen became North American racing’s all-time leading trainer by wins this summer. He’s won 9,466 races and been the trainer of record in more than 46,000. He’s likely seen all of them, and maybe tens of thousands more. And he’s about to add to the tally.

“I’m going to watch that a million times,” Asmussen said, standing among friends and family watching a replay of Saturday’s wild Grade 1 Forego Stakes.

Asmussen won the Forego with Bill and Corrine Heiligbrodt’s Yaupon. Yaupon impressed the Hall of Fame trainer, not just for winning his first Grade 1 and by running seven furlongs in 1m 21.74secs, but for withstanding what everyone was talking about for the rest of the day and likely for months and years to come.

Yaupon and Ricardo Santana Jr. led Firenze Fire by about a neck past the eighth pole in the Forego, a margin they maintained from that foe for most the previous six furlongs.

A few strides from the half-furlong pole Firenze Fire, apparently not satisfied with his attempts to get past, extended his neck and savaged Yaupon. He got hold of Yaupon’s white bridle a few times before Jose Ortiz was able to straighten him out in deep stretch. The momentum lost, Firenze Fire settled for second, just a head back.

Asmussen watched the race from the ground level on the apron well up from the finish.

Craziest thing

“That is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen,” Asmussen said. “When they were by me it looked like he was going to get Ricky.”

Santana stayed busy on Yaupon, who threw his head in the air a few times to avoid his biting adversary, and won his second Grade 1 of the meet.

“That was kind of scary,” he said. “That never happened to me before and the only thing I can think is ‘don’t stop riding.’”

Ortiz tried the same, and righted the half-turned savaging Firenze Fire, who just outside the eighth pole looked like he might add the Forego to his other career Grade 1 victory in the 2017 Champagne.

He’d been involved in a savaging incident once before, but on the receiving end when Whereshetoldmetogo took a bite approaching the finish of the Grade 3 Gallant Bob Stakes in September 2018 at Parx Racing.

Yaupon improved to six-for-eight in his career in the Forego, the lone defeats in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint last November at Keeneland and the Grade 1 Dubai Golden Shaheen in late March at Meydan Racecourse in Dubai off a more than four-month layoff.

He won last year’s Grade 2 Amsterdam late in the spectator-free Saratoga meet, before a victory in the Grade 3 Chick Lang on Preakness Day at Pimlico.

“It’s very exciting to have a winner of the Grade 1 Forego for the Heiligbrodts with such an exciting horse,” Asmussen said. “But the finish made it that much more dramatic. I will watch that replay many a time, many a time in my future.

“To witness one, or to watch a clip of one, in a Grade 1 at Saratoga, with two horses on the lead, that will be memorable.”