Travers Stakes winning trainer Jena Antonucci is ready to keep etching her name in the history book. She became the first female trainer to ever win a Triple Crown race with Arcangelo in June and now the second to win a Travers.
"I guess the more this horse does the more we are going to keep rewriting history, so immense gratitude for all of this and this horse," she said. "Anyone that wants something bad enough, you just gotta work your tail off for it. Doesn’t matter man, women, boy or girl you just want to fight for it and make it happen for yourself."
What You Need To Know
- Jena Antonucci becomes just the second female trainer to ever win Saratoga’s biggest race
- Jockey Javier Castellano furthers his own record and has now won the Travers seven times
- Two more horses, Nobel and New York Thunder had to be euthanized after suffering catastrophic breakdowns during their races
- Racing officials say they will be looking at data to see if there is a safety issue at the track
The grey colt did it in impressive fashion again with Javier Castellano in the irons, a record seventh Travers Stakes win for the jockey who didn’t have a mount in the summer's highest race the past two years.
"I don’t take anything for granted. You have to work hard and find the right horses. Trust me, seven winners means a lot to me," Javier Castellano said.
While the race ended with hugs and happy tears for some, the day was marred for many by two more horse deaths. Nobel and New York Thunder were both euthanized after breaking down. Now all organizations involved are trying to figure out what’s next.
"We will be talking about what happened today in the context of what led up to today," Dr. Scott Palmer of the New York State Gaming Commission, said. "We are going to be talking about the weather, the surfaces, the individual horse risk factors and we will make a decision about what we are going to do in terms of going forward."
There are of course people who say horse racing is an unsafe sport and should stop. They point to the six horses that have now suffered catastrophic injuries on the track in Saratoga this summer.
NYRA CEO David O’Rourke says the goal is to continue safely.
"We have to get to the bottom of this and then we have to be proactive and aggressive if there are answers to be found and there’s a proactive answer to be found, but we have to be data driven," O’Rourke said. "I think this is a beautiful sport. I think it’s gone back millennia and as technology improves surfaces improve we have to look at all options to make it a safe sport."