WELL SAID SETS SIGHTS ON NEW ORLEANS CAP
Well Said turned in an exceptional performance
last Sunday at Fair Grounds in his first race back since the Gr.3
Rebel at Oaklawn Park last March. His powerful score at a mile and
40 yards over Red Raymond, who beat him in the Rebel, gave trainer
Walter Bindner Jr. plenty to smile about.
"He was training great for the race," said Bindner. "He already
established that he was a pretty nice horse last year. You never
know when a horse comes back from an injury how well they'll come
back and how hard they'll try. All of his works indicated that he
was coming back well."
Well Said, a 3-year-old Aptitude colt, had been sidelined after
surgery to remove chips in his ankles.
"We actually tried to manage him through the Arkansas Derby, that
was our main goal, and that was going to be his last race for a
while," said Bindner. "We thought we could make it through, but we
couldn't."
After recovering over the summer, Well Said resumed training in
September. "The horse was already pretty fit," he said. "He had
gone a lot of miles on one of those walking machines, and all I had
to do then was gallop him a few days, then breeze him. He was
probably ready to run at Churchill, but I decided to wait until we
got down here to run him because this is such a good
racetrack."
The wait paid off, and now Bindner can look forward to having a
nice handicapper for the 2007 season.
"To win the race is obviously a wonderful surprise - it's hard to
do that off of that much layoff," he said. "He came out of the race
well. I could run him in the Louisiana Breeders' Cup race here Jan.
13 if I wanted to. I haven't really decided. I'm just waiting for
the horse to tell me when he's ready to run, and when he's ready to
run we'll look for a race.
"He's nominated for everything. I would like to run in the New
Orleans Handicap. I'm going to manage him with that race as our
goal right now."
Date:
18 December 2006