Mark Casse Joins the TDN Writers’ Room Podcast, Presented by Keeneland

[Wandering Eyes]

A veteran Hall of Fame trainer, Mark Casse knows that sometimes it's better to be lucky than good. The Casse-trained Sandman (Tapit) turned in a remarkable effort in his last start, the GIII Southwest S. at Oaklawn, finishing second after breaking in a tangle and dropping far behind the leaders. Once straightened out, he rallied furiously and finished second, missing by just a length.

To talk about the Southwest and Sandman's next start, Sunday's GII Rebel S. at Oaklawn, Casse joined the team on this week's TDN Writers' Room podcast presented by Keeneland. He was the Gainesway Guest of the Week.

“Take nothing away from the winner, but, yes, I think we would have won with a clean break,” Casse said. “I knew going in that we were going to find out whether he was a man or a boy. I think he proved he was a man. We all know that a lot of horses, even a lot of good horses, are not able to overcome what he was able to overcome. So I don't know about everybody else, but I came away from the race extremely impressed.”

Casse said he was not going to do anything out of the ordinary between the Southwest and Rebel to help his charge break more cleanly.

“He is so smart,” Casse said. “He does everything right. I just think it was a fluke. I'm not going to try to reinvent the wheel with him. He's done everything perfectly. I'm just going to say it was a fluke and we're going to go from there.”

Sandman was a $1.2-million purchase at the 2024 OBS March sale. He is owned by the partnership of D. J. Stable LLC, St. Elias Stable, West Point Thoroughbreds and CJ Stables. Casse said that, with the way the bidding was going, he didn't think his group was going to be the winning bidder.

“Jon Green came to me and said, 'What do you think of him?'” Casse said. “I said, 'I love him.' Terry Finley came to me and said, 'What do you think? I said, 'I love him.' The way I normally do it is I go around and tell the owners my choices. I tell them what I think and then I step away. When he brought $1.2 million, I said, 'Well, I guess we didn't get him.' And then I walked back there and luckily we did. From the very beginning, he would just do things with ease.”

Lately, Casse has been dividing his time between training and trying to find a solution that will keep South Florida racing going if legislation to decouple is passed and Gulfstream is closed. On Monday, he was in Tallahassee with other horsemen to meet with legislators.

“We brought a group together to bring all horsemen together to go in one direction,” he said. “So we're working on that. I think we were a little stunned by the news that they were going to try to decouple, but we shouldn't have been. We cannot allow one person anymore to control our destiny. So we're working diligently to see what we can do. We have some very important people helping us and we will end up succeeding. It's a battle and it's not easy and it may be the last thing I do.”

In our “Fastest Horse of the Week,” segment, which is sponsored by WinStar, we went over the many reasons there are breed to WinStar stallion Cogburn. The fastest horse of the week was Magnitude (Not This Time), who earned a 108 Beyer in a sizzling victory in the GII Risen Star S. Magnitude came out of the race with a minor injury and will not make the GI Kentucky Derby.

Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, the KTOB, 1/ST Racing and 1/ST TV, the team of Randy Moss, Zoe Cadman and Bill Finley looked ahead at this weekend's action, which includes a huge card at Oaklawn Park on Sunday, topped by the GII Rebel S. and the GIII Honeybee S. Saturday's card at Turfway Park includes the Derby prep the John Battaglia Memorial S. The favorite may be First Resort (Uncle Mo) who will be making his 3-year-old debut. He currently tops the TDN Kentucky Derby Top 12, which is authored by T.D. Thornton. Another topic of discussion was the betamethasone positive Todd Pletcher received last week. For Bob Baffert, Medina Spirit (Protonico) crossed the wire first in the 2021 Derby and then tested positive for betamethasone. That was part of the reason Baffert received a lengthy ban from Churchill Downs, which kept him out of three straight Derbies. If the charges stick, Pletcher may get no more than a $500 fine from the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit (HIWU), an indication of how severe the Churchill ban against Baffert was.

To view the video of the podcast, click here. For the audio version, click here.

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