JOCKEY QUOTES

            UMBERTO RISPOLI, THE CHOSEN VRON, WINNER: “”When the gates crashed his intent was to go, obviously he’s coming from a six furlong race but it’s so far he understood that when we didn’t go anywhere, he just switched off his mind and on the first turn he was just completely relaxed. I had him in a good spot, I threw him on the inside because I know he likes the kickback, and I travelled all the was inside to find a good spot at the three-eighth pole just moving him up.  At that point I knew he was the horse to beat, I felt that I had so much horse under me that he did the rest.

“After I got behind Classier, I came out and  said, ‘okay, it’s business time’ and it was just a feeling that he was going to switch his lead and I knew he was going to go by them easy. He’s a small horse but he’s got a big heart. He’s got an amazing mind to go from six furlongs  to a mile and sixteenths  for the first time, he does an amazing job.”

TRAINER QUOTES

            ERIC J. KRULJAC, THE CHOSEN VRON , WINNER: “I thought he’d show more natural speed but they sent a couple horses real hard and Umberto took the initiative and he had so much horse last time…And he had so much left over at the finish last time.  He rode the horse with a lot of faith and he got there.  He had a lot of kickback on him, but he’ll run through it, this horse.  All day long is was wire to wire…”

Was he concerned that Defunded was gone on the lead turning for home?  “Yeah, because of the way the track was playing all day…That’s why I told Umberto, if the opportunity is there, if there’s not much pace, feel free to go…And then I said, ‘By the way, for the next 10 minutes, you own this horse.’  And he rode him his way.  I think we’re going to be going for the easy money now, I mean those races are going to be tough too, there’s some good Cal-breds.  But it looks like we’ll run for a $175,000 in the Real Good Deal going seven furlongs next time at Del Mar (July 30)…I decided to go here today to experiment with the distance because we have almost 40 days to the race at Del Mar.  So we had time to regroup if it didn’t go well.”

            NOTES: The winning owner is Eric Kruljac, Robert Fetkin, John Sondereker, and Richard Thornburgh…