$500,000 Stakes in Kentucky : Kingpost Shows a Big Kick in Barn and Just Enough on Track

FLORENCE, Ky. â€”  A couple of days ago, Dianne Carpenter, the high-school English teacher who became a trainer, was warning visitors to her barn about getting too close to a 3-year-old gelding who seemed too small to be a mountain but too big to be a horse.

“This horse kicked me in the leg and knocked me down,� the 42-year-old Carpenter said in her Georgia-Louisiana twang. “He’s a real cow-kicker. I’ve got a big black-and-blue mark up near my thigh that won’t wait.�

Kingpost was the horse under discussion, and Saturday he continued to attack everyone in sight. At the barn he gave a blacksmith a rough time while a shoe adjustment was being made, and in the paddock before the $500,000 Jim Beam Stakes he kicked his groom, knocking him against the stall wall.

Then Kingpost knocked a hole into the form sheet of the Jim Beam, barely lasting at the wire over two late-running favorites. The official winning margin was a head, but it looked more like a nose as Stalwars and Brian’s Time almost overhauled this 17-hand (68-inch) rogue in a result that shocked most of the 16,502 fans at Turfway Park.

So yet another Kentucky Derby prep left more questions than answers. Kingpost’s win over 1 1/8 miles still raised doubts about whether he can run the Derby distance of 1 miles. And both Stalwars and Brian’s Time ran distinguished races, Stalwars recovering from a road block with three-eighths of a mile to run and Brian’s Time making up 14 lengths over a tiring, muddy track that favored early speed most of the day.

Kingpost, who failed to win in six straight starts after winning the only two races of his life during an 11-day stretch at River Downs in Cincinnati last August, was the seventh betting choice in an 11-horse field and paid $44.40, $12.60 and $6. Stalwars, second by a nose, paid $6 and $4.60, and Brian’s Time, the Florida Derby winner and 2-1 favorite, paid $3.20 to show.

After those three, the order of finish was Jim’s Orbit, Drouilly’s Boy, Dynaformer, Delightful Doctor, Glory Afar, Cannon Dancer, Buck Forbes and Longview Ashley.

The horses that ran 1-2 are both sons of Stalwart, who was one of the country’s top 2-year-olds in 1981 before suffering a career-ending tendon injury at Santa Anita before the start of his 3-year-old season.

Trainer Bert Sonnier, a close friend of Carpenter’s, bought Stalwars for $105,000 for his owner, Corbin Robertson. All last week, Carpenter thought about how upsetting it would be if Kingpost were beaten by Stalwars, and it almost happened.

Mark Warner, who bred both Kingpost and Stalwars, tried to sell Kingpost privately as a yearling and no one would take the horse for as little as $10,000. Timed in 1:50 4/5 Saturday, Kingpost earned $300,000 for Warner, increasing his career total to $440,640.

“We were able to sell Stalwars (at auction) because he was a prettier horse,� Warner said. “Kingpost was all right structurally, but he didn’t have a pretty face and he had a behind that you might have wanted to fillet like a fish. He reminded me of a scarecrow, or maybe an aardvark.�

When Kingpost was led off a van and Carpenter first saw him, she said: “What is this, an embryo? He doesn’t look like he’s been formed yet.�

For a long time, Kingpost’s nickname around the barn was “Big Head.�

Besides the problems nature gave him, this has been an unlucky horse. In Florida this year, he developed a skin disease which left unsightly marks around his neck. Then, after losing a tuneup for the Jim Beam by 10 lengths as the 9-5 favorite two weeks ago, Kingpost was examined and found to have a lung infection. Carpenter had a nebulizer--a machine than helps a horse inhale warm, fresh air--rushed to Turfway and her veterinarian, Charles Hord, began treating Kingpost with sulfur drugs.

Kingpost had different riders--Laffit Pincay, Herb McCauley and Mike Moran--in his three races before the Jim Beam, and when Carpenter called Eddie Delahoussaye to ride him Saturday, the jockey looked at the horse’s last race and stayed at Santa Anita.

So Gene Sipus, a 28-year-old leading Turfway rider who had never won a race this important before, regained the mount almost by default. Sipus rode Kingpost to victory both times at River Downs, but was replaced by Pincay in the Young America last fall at the Meadowlands after a third-place finish in a race at Keeneland.

“I ought to call Delahoussaye and thank him,� Sipus said Saturday. “This is the greatest feeling I’ve ever had in racing.�

Sipus had Kingpost closer than he expected to be at the start. They were in fifth place after a half-mile, with Cannon Dancer, Drouilly’s Boy, Longview Ashley and Delightful Doctor ahead of them.

“You can make the mistake of moving too soon on this track,� Sipus said, “but this horse dragged me up to those other horses. But when we were third, moving up to second, I had a lot of horse left.�

At the top of the stretch, Drouilly’s Boy had the rail and the lead, showing exceptional resolve for a horse that hadn’t run in almost three months. Kingpost was in the middle, a half-length behind, with a tiring Jim’s Orbit on the outside.

At the eighth pole, Drouilly’s Boy began to drop back. Sipus was whipping Kingpost vigorously with his left hand. Stalwars and Brian’s Time, making up for lost time, were still to be heard from.

“With 70 yards to go, I thought my horse was going to open up, but he didn’t,� Sipus said. “This was something new for him, having horses running at him instead of him doing the chasing. I thought we were going to win near the wire, but then in the last couple of jumps those horses came up, and then I was worried that maybe they nailed us.�

Stalwars was probably best. “He was unlucky to lose,� jockey Gary Stevens said. “On the turn, I was blocked from getting outside. There was a hole inside, but then the horse ahead dropped back in front of us.

“I thought we were going to clip heels. My horse’s front legs were between the back legs of the horse in front of us, but we didn’t touch. This horse surprised me after that, because I thought he was a one-run horse, but then he came back and made a second sustained run. I had to steady him for about five strides, and he still came back.�

Brian’s Time is headed for New York and the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 23. Kingpost and Stalwars may be facing each other again soon, in the Lexington Stakes at Keeneland on April 16, although Carpenter is thinking about not running Kingpost until the Kentucky Derby on May 7. There is also the possibility that Stalwars might run in the Blue Grass at Keeneland on April 28.

No matter where Kingpost runs next, the stable hands won’t be calling him “Big Head� anymore. Not unless they’re referring to the airs he’s entitled to show after what he did Saturday.

Horse Racing Notes

Dianne Carpenter is one of only five woman trainers to saddle a horse in the Kentucky Derby. She finished 12th at Churchill Downs with Biloxi Indian in 1984. . . . Trainer Phil Hauswald, at Turfway Park Saturday to saddle a horse, reported that Epitome, last year’s champion 2-year-old filly, was seriously injured while running second in her 3-year-old debut on Friday at Oaklawn Park. Jumping the tracks from the starting gate at the sixteenth pole, Epitome slashed her left front ankle. “It was like somebody had hit her with an ax,� Hauswald said. “You could part the layers of skin and there was room to put your fist through. I’d say that it’s going to be at least two months before I get her back in training again.� . . . Patti Cooksey won her first race with her second mount since having knee surgery, taking Saturday’s Fairway Fun Stakes at Turfway with Lt. Lao.