ARCADIA — After coming within a horse length of championship glory in the Breeders’ Cup last year, the trainer and owners of the millionaire miler Johannes had to wonder if a new way of preparing could make the crucial difference this time around.
Like it or not, they’re about to find out.
Five-year-old Johannes goes into the $200,000, Grade II City of Hope Mile at Santa Anita on Saturday needing a sharp effort to prove he’s a threat in the upcoming Breeders’ Cup Mile after his season so far has, to say the least, not gone as planned.
“To me, this race is everything. He has to perform well,” said Joe McCloskey, the Solana Beach resident who, with his wife Debby, owns Johannes. “Breeders’ Cup is five weeks away. He should be there (in Breeders’ Cup-winning form) now.”
At Santa Anita, which opened its monthlong fall meet Friday, Saturday’s and Sunday’s cards feature 2024 Breeders’ Cup winners and other horses who could be contenders at the event Oct. 31-Nov. 1 at Del Mar.
They include, on Saturday, 2024 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile winner Full Serrano in the $300,000, Grade I Goodwood Stakes and Gold Phoenix in the $200,000 John Henry Turf Championship; and, on Sunday, 2024 Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Straight No Chaser in the $200,000, Grade II Santa Anita Sprint Championship and Cavalieri in the $200,000, Grade II Zenyatta Stakes.
But no horse has more on the line this weekend than Johannes, whose owner leaves open the possibility of not going back to the Breeders’ Cup Mile if he doesn’t like what he sees in the City of Hope Mile.
“We’re not thinking about anything right now other than winning and winning large (on Saturday),” McCloskey said. “If that doesn’t happen, we’d have to regroup.”
Johannes, a son of 2016 Kentucky Derby winner Nyquist and the McCloskeys’ mare Cuyathy, had the best overall campaign of any thoroughbred in California in 2024, winning five of six starts at the Grade I, II and III level with jockey Umberto Rispoli. That boosted his career record to 8 for 13, with earnings of $1.15 million.
His only defeat was a second-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Mile on the Del Mar turf. Sent off as the 4-1 third choice, Johannes outfinished 2-1 favorite Notable Speech but couldn’t hold off 6-1 More Than Looks. The margin was three-quarters of a length.
At the end of the year, Johannes came in a close second again, this time in the race for the Eclipse Award for the nation’s best male turf specialist. Breeders’ Cup Turf winner Rebel’s Romance won in the closest vote in any championship division.
The McCloskeys and trainer Tim Yakteen expected even bigger things this year.
Their first hint that it might be different came in January, after they’d made plans to run in the $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational at Gulfstream Park in Florida. A case of bone bruising, something Johannes had experienced as a 3-year-old, kept him home. The plan had been to give Johannes a break from racing at some point, and now it would happen earlier than intended and include some time at Brookdale Farm, his birthplace, in Versailles, Ky.
Johannes’ comeback race was the Fourstardave Stakes at Saratoga in early August.
“Everything went absolutely perfect until the moment the (starting) gates opened,” Yakteen said, deadpan, this week at Santa Anita.
Starting from the No. 3 post as a 9-5 favorite, Johannes was bumped by No. 2 My Boy Prince and jockey Jose Ortiz, who took a right turn out of the gate, and then crowded by No. 1 Cugino and Jose’s brother Irad. Rispoli was forced to check Johannes repeatedly at the back of the 10-horse pack. After getting up to seventh on the backstretch, they faded to finish ninth.
“The way we look at it, we sent him out to New York in hopes of getting a fair race, and we were mugged at the start of the race by the Ortiz brothers,” said McCloskey, who said he took his complaint to the Saratoga stewards to no avail.
Did Johannes get anything out of the race?
“A lesson not to race out in Saratoga,” McCloskey said.
Yakteen and McCloskey said they’re looking at the bright side of Johannes being winless, after only one start, at this point in the year: Maybe a fresher Johannes will be just a little better at the Breeders’ Cup.
“It’s not what we would have chosen, but it’s what we got,” said Yakteen, who has seen Johannes turn in consistently strong workouts at Del Mar and Santa Anita since coming home from New York.
“I’d like to believe that maybe this is a little bit of divine intervention,” McCloskey said. “Maybe (Johannes has) got something in (his) tank.”
They’ll know more on Saturday.
Two new rides
Replacements were named in Saturday’s Santa Anita races for suspended jockey Paco Lopez. Rispoli will ride 8-5 morning-line favorite First Mission in the Goodwood, and Antonio Fresu will have 3-1 favorite Reef Runner in the Eddie D.
The suspension of of Lopez, who leads the nation in wins with 300 this year while based in Pennsylvania and New Jersey, stems from violations of Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority whip-rule violations. He’s appealing but was denied a stay.