JOCKEY QUOTES

            JUAN HERNANDEZ, BRICKYARD RIDE, WINNER: “He came to play today, just like he always does.  He loves to run and I was just having fun with him.  My horse crossed the dirt pretty good and after that, I asked him a couple times to pick it up and he just kept going.”

TRAINER QUOTES

            CRAIG A. LEWIS, BRICKYARD RIDE, WINNER: “I was asked earlier, ‘What’s your strategy?’  And I said, ‘Rock the party, baby!’  He’s fast and he’s good right now.  He doesn’t leave the gate as quickly as people would imagine, but after a stride or two, he’s just fast.  He can get into stride faster than any horse I’ve ever seen.  He looked like he was going easy, but when I looked up and saw the first split (21.21), I said, ‘Holy Cow.’  And then when I looked up and saw the second one (42.76), I said, ‘Can that be right?’  And then you saw the rest.  He’s just a really good horse and I’m lucky to have him.  Juan’s got great hands, so he really fits a horse like this.”

OWNER QUOTES

          ALFRED PAIS, BRICKYARD RIDE, OWNER/BREEDER WINNER: “After they dug up the track for the Bing Crosby, I thought he was really good that day and things went the wrong direction, so we kind of decided to give him a little bit of a break. He runs every race and he goes to the front, so it was time for a little break. We have been just trying to plan it out, make it as easy as possible to see how good he is before he tackles a little heavier company.

“Anytime you try something different you get a little nervous, but when you’re a runner you usually run, and he’s a runner, I think he can run on anything really, short, long. We will just see how it goes.

“I knew he’d be kind of keen today because I went back to the barn and he was a little keyed up. I think out of the gate he’s not the fastest horse but by the sixteenth he gets moving pretty smoothly. It looked like he took a little bit of bobble, slight, but then he corrected himself. I think Juan said he was trying to go faster, and he was trying to slow him down, but he wanted to go faster. He’s a nice horse.”

            NOTES: The winning owner/breeder is Alfred Pais.