My strongest rooting interest of the Saratoga meet runs Friday in the Grade 2 Bernard Baruch.
Get Stormy, a multiple stakes winner, is trained by one of my favorite horsemen, the likeable, hard-working, and talented Tom Bush. But my desire to see Get Stormy win his sixth stakes goes beyond liking and respecting Tom. Get Stormy’s maternal sire is Kiri’s Clown, a Grade 1 winner who was trained by my father, P. G. Johnson. And as if I needed a further reason to root for the 4-year-old son of Stormy Atlantic, he is owned and bred by Mary Sullivan, a longtime and loyal owner, and friend, who had horses with my father right up until time of his death in 2004.

Mrs. Sullivan also owned Kiri’s Clown, a really neat turf runner who captured the 1995 Sword Dancer at Saratoga. He never really turned out to be a terrific sire but one of his daughters, Foolish Gal, has produced a nifty runner in Get Stormy, who enters the $200,000 Bernard Baruch following an impressive victory in the Grade 2 Fourstardave earlier in the Saratoga meet.

Kiri remains close to my heart. I have a cool photograph hanging in my home of Kiri and my father, and I’ve visited Kiri at Old Friends in Kentucky, which has been his home for some time now. Just last week I received an update from Michael Blowen of Old Friends who said Kiri is doing just fine and urged me to come and visit the old guy who is now 21.

I see no physical likeness between Kiri and Get Stormy, who is nicknamed Clyde. When Tom introduced me to Get Stormy earlier in the meet and told me his barn name, it only took a nanosecond for me to figure out how he earned the moniker. The bay colt has a mass of white on his rather large head, and each of his legs looks as if he is wearing standing bandages at all times.

“One night I came back to the barn to check on him, and I was looking at him from my car and the way the light from the stall was shining on him, I swear he looked like a Clydesdale,” Tom said. “If he had hairy fetlocks, he would definitely pass for a Clydesdale.”

Get Stormy is much lighter on his feet than a Clydesdale. Since winning his stakes debut here last year, the Lure, Get Stormy has posted wins in three graded races. The year-end goal for the colt is the Breeders’ Cup Mile. Should he run, Get Stormy will be Tom’s first Breeders’ Cup starter.

“Can you imagine we are pointing to a race where we will have to face Goldikova?” Bush said rhetorically.

If Get Stormy makes it to the Breeders’ Cup, you can bet that I will be rooting for him there as well.

Blind Luck got acquainted with the Saratoga paddock on Thursday before the third race, in advance of her New York debut in Saturday’s $500,000 Alabama.
She arrived in the paddock slightly lathered from the walk over on the warm afternoon. Assistant Archie Cross quickly tended to the queen by hosing her off, and the filly visibly chilled as the cool water cascaded over her copper-colored coat.
The heat really will be turned up in the Grade 1 Alabama, where the top two 3-year-old fillies in the country, Blind Luck and Devil May Care, meet for the first time this year. In their only other match-up, last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies at Santa Anita, Blind Luck was third and Devil May Care finished 11th.
Many are billing Saturday’s meeting as East vs. West. The West Coast-based Blind Luck traveled east of the Rockies three times this year, and was victorious every time. East Coaster Devil May Care worked her magic this year in New York and Florida.
But Jerry Hollendorfer, Blind Luck’s trainer, said viewing the Grade 1 Alabama as a bi-coastal rivalry – incidentally, the Alabama features four other accomplished fillies – is something invented by the media and fans.
“Hey, I’m not rivals with Todd,” Hollendorfer said of Devil May Care’s trainer, Todd Pletcher. “And horses leave their home bases all the time and run somewhere else. This is the fourth time we left California this year. What the Alabama is, is the most important race of the summer for 3-year-old fillies.”