Adam Coglianese / NYRA Photo

Stan the Man gets the best of cavalry charge to the finish in $85K Tale of the Cat

by Ryan Martin

The seventh running of the $85,000 Tale of the Cat saw all five contestants separated by less than a length at the eighth-pole, but it was Long Lake Stable's Stan the Man who prevailed with a last-to-first move in the final strides to back up his favoritism and score a second stakes triumph in the six-furlong event for 4-year-olds and upward over the Saratoga Race Course main track.

The 6-year-old chestnut son of Broken Vow broke from post 2 under jockey Joel Rosario and was placed at the rear of the field, with four-time winner Ready to Escape taking command by one length leading the compact field through an opening quarter-mile in 22.38 seconds and a half in 45.02 on the fast main track.

At the top of the stretch, Ready to Escape's advantage dwindled down to a head, with Binkster and multiple New York-bred stakes winner My Boy Tate rallying to his outside and T Loves a Fight angling inside in search of racing room.

Meanwhile, Stan the Man made an aggressive five-wide move to the far outside and hit the front just past the sixteenth-pole en route to a 1 ½-length win in a final time of 1:09.47. My Boy Tate finished a half-length ahead of Binkster and T Loves a Fight, who dead-heated for third. Ready to Escape completed the order of finish.

Trained by John Terranova, Stan the Man arrived at the Tale of the Cat off a runner-up finish to Grade 1 winner Firenze Fire in the Grade 2 True North on June 27 at Belmont Park and scored his first win since capping off his 2019 campaign in style with a win in the 1 1/8-mile Queens County over the main track at Aqueduct.

"He ran so well last time in the True North shortening him back up," Terranova said. "He had a couple of races earlier in the year where we were scratching our heads and weren't sure what the issues were. We started to do something different and cut him back to sprinting, where he was successful before early on. He's a versatile type. We can do just about anything with him, so this looked like the right spot conditions-wise up here."

The victory was Rosario's meet-leading eighth stakes win.

"Being on the inside, he broke well, but everybody sent right away, so I let him be there," Rosario said. "I didn't want to chase them and just stayed inside for a bit and he didn't mind that. Turning for home, I came outside, and that's what he wanted to do. I wanted to be in the clear. I had the best horse in the race, and I didn't want to be stuck on the inside the way the race was going. I was just looking to get in the clear. He finished really well."

Terranova made an equipment change for the Tale of the Cat and opted to take the blinkers off Stan the Man.

"We weren't so sure what he would do. He's trained really well and we thought about taking them off for a while. After seeing his last race, he made the front in the True North and to us it seemed like he waited a little bit," Terranova said. "Obviously, he got run down by a top-class horse [Firenze Fire], so no disgrace there it since was a great effort. The first couple of works up here I thought were a little bit on the lazy side and he wasn't engaging as much so I thought 'Let's take them off.' He worked great, real sharp last week. We thought let's try it here, take them off and we'll see. Six furlongs, you want to have a little bit [of push] you want to be there but we thought it would be something to move forward off of if it worked. And it sure did."

Returning $3.90 as the favorite for a $2 win bet, Stan the Man improved his record to 14-7-7-2 while banking $46,750 in victory to increase his lifetime earnings to $483,124. Tenth time was the charm for Stan the Man, who did not break his maiden until his tenth lifetime start in March 2018 at Aqueduct.

Bred in Kentucky by Emma Quinn, Dermot Quinn, Scott Peirce and Debbie Pierce, Stan the Man is out of the graded stakes placed Harlan's Holiday mare Nite in Rome, who also produced stakes-placed Three Technique.

Live racing returns on Friday with a 9-race card which features the $85,000 Skidmore for juveniles going 5 ½ furlongs over the Mellon turf. First post is 1:10 p.m. Eastern.