Ward Looks for Prix Morny Number Four With Outfielder

[Wandering Eyes]

There aren't many American trainers who win a two-year-old grass maiden at Churchill Downs and immediately think that the obvious next stop is the Group 1 Prix Morny at Deauville at the end of August. But Wesley Ward isn't like most American trainers.

For one thing, he's tried it four times. Won three. Finished second the other time.

He'll take his fifth tilt at the Morny on August 24 when he sends Outfielder (Speightstown) over to Deauville for just his second lifetime start.

Ward is known for thinking outside the box.

“It's just a race that we know we can be competitive in if we have that type of horse,” said Ward.

The trainer is best known for his success at Royal Ascot, but his record in the Morny is starting to rival his triumphs in England.
The race is named after the Duc de Morny, the founder of Deauville Racecourse who died in 1864, and is one of the oldest races in France, having its first running in the year after his death, in 1865.
Ward first gave it a crack in 2013, winning with No Nay Never. He tried again in 2014, and finished second with Hootenanny, his one defeat. He came back two years later with Lady Aurelia, and won again. Four years after that, he was back with another winner, Campanelle.

“We started going to Royal Ascot, and when we were successful there, we sort of looked at where we would go next on the grass, and there was nothing really in America until the fall of the year,” said Ward of his initial discovery of the race. “I like to have good spacing between the races, two months from race to race, and it gave us time to come back, get ready for the next, get over that Royal Ascot race, and then target (the Morny).”

Ward thought a lot of Outfielder-named after one of his owners, the former baseball outfielder Jayson Werth-from the get-go. He was an $850,000 Saratoga yearling, and, said Ward, was one of two horses at that sale he just had to have. The other, Schwarzenegger (Not This Time) cost $950,000 and is currently working toward an impending debut at Saratoga.

“Both of them are very high quality two-year-olds, but Outfielder can run on either surface,” said Ward. “He's just a big, beautiful colt. He looks like he's going to want to go a little further with his size, albeit by being by Speightstown, who was a sprinter, but as a sire, he's thrown everything. This is a colt that I think will go on to do certainly a mile or further.”

Outfielder won his May 23 debut at Churchill Downs by 8 ¼ lengths as the 3-10 favorite and was named a TDN Rising Star for the performance.

His next start was supposed to be at Ascot, but, said Ward, “unfortunately, in his workout here on the grass at Keeneland, subsequent to his race, he came up with a minor shin, so we just backed off. It was it was a bit of a letdown for my partners and myself, but we put the horse first. And now we've got plenty of time getting them ready for the Morny, and I think big, high-cruising type stride that Outfielder has is a perfect fit for it.”

Ward is also a part-owner of Outfielder. “He's got a wonderful ownership group. Jayson Werth, his World Series-winning outfielder, and Kia Joorabchian (of Amo Racing) who has come into the game and has spent a lot of money to have horses like this.”

For Ward, that Churchill race was both a relief and a validation.

“Everything that I really thought that this colt was, that I had seen in the morning and what I had seen when I bought him, he really came through with. It was like a revelation. So we were really excited for him. He's a really easy-going colt to be around, kind of cocky if you're around him. Like he knows he'd be a young high school or college athlete that's heading to the pros.”

At Keeneland, Outfielder continues to work steadily toward the Morny.

“I've got a very light rider, Julio Garcia, who has been with me for nearly 20 years,” said Ward. “He probably won close to 200 races for me as a jockey, and he's a phenomenal rider with a great opinion. And so he'll be taking him into the race. This month we'll do a lot of easy half-mile breezes just to keep him sound. And then as we get closer to the race, we'll start kind of setting him down a little bit and probably get maybe a five-eighths work or two into him as we head into August. We'll be setting him down with some pretty high-quality colts to where we tighten the screws down a bit and he comes right into the race sound and fit. This is something that I've done in the past with the horses that I brought over there.”

As with No Nay Never, a Group 1 Morny win would mean a lot on his resume, Ward said.

“As I said, he's equally as talented on both surfaces. So if he could win a Group 1 race, that will certainly stamp him as a possible sire. I told the owners we'll sit down and have a discussion as to which Breeders' Cup race we'll go to if we if we get that far.

“You're always planning and hoping things come to fruition, but you know in horse racing things can change in a minute, but right now everything's really, really good and we've got big dreams for him.”

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