A colt named Calipari made his horse racing debut Saturday. How’d he do?
Calipari, a 3-year-old colt who shares the same name as Kentucky’s Hall of Fame basketball coach, made his horse racing debut Saturday afternoon.
He finished 10th and last as the 3-1 morning-line favorite in a field of maiden runners going 1 mile on the dirt at Gulfstream Park. His odds had jumped to 9-1 by post time, making him the fourth betting choice in the race.
Calipari broke awkwardly in his first career start — bumping the horse to his outside — before getting straightened out in the early going. He ran near the back of the pack for much of the way and never factored into the race, dropping to ninth at the top of the stretch and finishing a well-beaten last.
The race was won by Volcanic.
Calipari (the horse) is trained by Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher and was originally scheduled to be ridden Saturday by Irad Ortiz Jr., the three-time defending Eclipse Award winner as the nation’s top jockey. Ortiz was off his planned mounts Saturday with a sore knee, however, and Calipari had jockey Leonel Reyes aboard instead. The colt’s sire is two-time American Horse of the Year winner Curlin.
WinStar Farm is the co-owner — along with Paris-based Siena Farm — and breeder of Calipari, and that Woodford County racing outfit also has a relationship with UK basketball coach John Calipari, who attended the Belmont Stakes in 2018 with WinStar owner Kenny Troutt to watch the farm’s star 3-year-old, Justify, win the Triple Crown.
Calipari tweeted a photo that day with Troutt, his wife, Lisa, and Bob Baffert, who trained Justify. A few days later, the UK coach took the entire Wildcats basketball team to meet the Triple Crown winner.
Troutt, who is based in Texas, also founded and financed a Nike-level AAU basketball team that once featured Julius Randle, who would go on to star under Calipari at Kentucky and lead the Cats to the national title game in 2014.
As a 3-year-old, Calipari is eligible for this year’s Kentucky Derby, but he’s off to a bit of a late start to make that May 7 race. Calipari was not among the nearly 200 horses on the William Hill sportsbook list of early Derby hopefuls to start the week. The colt had been in training in Florida since October for his racing debut Saturday.
There was also a racehorse named Calipari that was foaled in 2007 and was active on the track from 2009 to 2013. That horse won one race in 19 career starts.
