Another “Golden Ticket” opportunity for McPeek in G1 DraftKings Travers
At 9h01, on August 22, 2024 • By Saratoga Race Course
In 2012, trainer Kenny McPeek believed the 1-for-9 Golden Ticket was in good enough form to contest the historic Grade 1 Travers at Saratoga Race Course. It was a massive ask for just a maiden winner, but it proved to be the right call as the 33-1 longshot dead-heated for victory with the favored Alpha in a finish for the ages.
On Saturday, McPeek sends out filly Thorpedo Anna to take on males in the Grade 1, $1.25 million DraftKings Travers. While she does bring a multiple Grade 1-winning resume to the starting gate, the gutsy attempt and faith in a horse is reminiscent of the ambitious try with Golden Ticket over one decade ago.
“She might be the best horse that I’ve ever taken over there,” said McPeek. “If she beats Dornoch, Fierceness, and Sierra Leone… just walk her straight over to the Hall of Fame.”
Magic City Thoroughbred Partners’ Golden Ticket, a Speightstown dark bay out of the Deputy Minister mare Business Plan, didn’t have nearly the 6-for-7 record of Thorpedo Anna entering the Travers. He graduated in his sixth start when traveling 1 1/16 miles in an off-the-turf maiden special weight in February 2012 at Gulfstream Park.
He exited the elusive win to be narrowly defeated by subsequent multiple graded stakes-winner Prospective in the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby, which was followed by a fifth in the Grade 3 Lexington at Keeneland and another runner-up finish in an optional-claimer in May at Churchill Downs.
McPeek said it was a slow start, but Golden Ticket was training forwardly into the “Mid-Summer Derby.”
“He was just a horse that took a while to come around,” McPeek said. “He ended up there through a series of events. We actually entered him in an a-other-than allowance race and it didn’t fill because we had rain. We opted to run him in the Travers because he was just doing so good.”
The 11-horse field featured Godolphin’s Grade 1-placed Alpha, a Kiaran McLaughlin pupil entering off an impressive win in the Grade 2 Jim Dandy under eventual Hall of Famer Ramon Dominguez. Alpha was by 2006 Travers-winner and Champion 3-Year-Old Colt Bernardini.
Fast forward to this year’s running, McPeek will need a little more Travers good fortune to see a filly win for the first time since Lady Rotha in 1915.
“Why not her? If it’s ever going to happen, it could happen with her,” McPeek said.
