Traditions, even antiquated ones, die hard in thoroughbred racing, and one of them will be on display early this afternoon when Aqueduct runs its Thanksgiving Day feature, the Grade 3, $100,000 Fall Highweight Handicap, for the 91st time.
First post for Turkey Day at the Big A is 11 a.m., with the last race going off at 2:45 p.m.
The six-furlong Fall Highweight, which saddles sprinters with heavy loads they’ll rarely, if ever, carry again, is an anachronism in this day and age, when horsemen regard any weight above 120 pounds as an undue burden. The highest impost ever carried to victory is 140 pounds, a feat accomplished eight times, most recently by Mt. Livermore in 1985. So NYRA racing secretary Mike Lakow was paying Bwana Charlie quite a compliment when he pegged the 3-year-old colt as the Highweight’s highweight packing 137 pounds under Stewart Elliott.
Winner of the Amsterdam at Saratoga this past summer, Bwana Charlie was forced to circle the field on the turn, then finished fast to be fourth, beaten 2 ½ lengths, in his last start, the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
“He ran a real good race,” said trainer Steve Asmussen, who’s won more than 500 races this year to shatter Jack Van Berg’s single-season mark of 496 set in 1976. “We knew he was likely to get a lot of traffic, which he did, and he still didn’t get beat all that much.”
Because of Bwana Charlie’s size, Asmussen isn’t deterred by the weight.
“He’s not so much large as he is huge,” said Asmussen. “The percentage of weight he has to carry isn’t that much in percentage to how big he is. I think that he can handle carrying this kind of weight where smaller horses might have a problem.”
Next on the scale, at 134 pounds under Jose Santos, is another 3-year-old, Medallist. Trained by Allen Jerkens, Medallist scorched the track last spring and summer with runaway victories in the Withers and Dwyer. He’ll be making his first start since stopping badly in the Aug. 28 Kings Bishop but has been working bullets in the mornings.