Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association of New Jersey
by Bill Finley
It took the New Jersey-bred Cruise the Nile a while to get to the races, and it didn't exactly go well when he did. He debuted on Nov. 25 of last year at Laurel, late into his 3-year-old campaign, and finished a non-threatening fourth in a six-furlong dirt maiden.
“I really liked him the first time I ran him, so I was a little disappointed with the way he ran,” his trainer, Graham Motion, said. “He'd shown too much ability for me to be that far wrong about him.”
Since then, the gelding by Cairo Prince has been perfect. Winning his fourth straight, Cruise the Nile captured the April 18 Henry S. Clark Stakes at Laurel, winning the one-mile race by a well-measured neck under jockey Jorge Ruiz. The Clark is a prep for the May 18 Dinner Party Stakes, a $500,000 event run at a mile-and-an-eighth on the grass and on the Preakness undercard.
Cruise the Nile is owned by and was bred by Hope Jones, the daughter of Monmouth Park founder Amory L. Haskell. Jones has been a longtime, enthusiastic supporter of the New Jersey breeding program.
“We had a couple of little issues with him,” Motion said. “We had an infected vein when he was a 2-year-old from an antibiotic shot. We just had some tricky things that we had to deal with. I just can't tell you how happy I am for Hope that it's worked out because she's been so patient and so good about it. It just took us a long time to get into the races. We always thought he was a runner, which made it even more frustrating that we had issues with him early on.”
Cruise the Nile prospered once Motion decided he was a grass horse. In his second career start, which was his grass debut, he broke his maiden at Gulfstream. He came right back to win a first-level allowance at Gulfstream on the synthetic surface.
“The mare (Party Boat) was more grassy, but she handled the dirt as well,” Motion said. “I felt he'd shown enough on the dirt to run on the dirt, but, clearly, the grass has been a different deal.”
It was after the gelding's fourth start that Motion began to believe he might have a quality stakes horse on his hands. He stepped up into a second-level allowance race at Gulfstream and won by 2 1/4 lengths over a quality field. The runner-up was Burnham Square, last year's Blue Grass winner, who came back to win the Grade II Elkhorn Stakes on April 18 at Keeneland.
“His last two races have been against pretty solid company,” Motion said. “The 'two other than' at Gulfstream could have been a stakes race anywhere else in the country. It was kind of a wide-open allowance race and the horse he beat (Burnham Square), came back and galloped over the weekend at Keeneland.”
In the Clark, Cruise the Nile showed a new dimension. In his three prior starts, he was either on the lead or stalking the pace. At Laurel, he closed from sixth and didn't get rolling until near the top of the stretch.
“We just felt there was a ton of speed in this race,” Motion said. “We never felt he was one-dimensional. He had always been a very sensible horse at Gulfstream. We kind of took advantage of the fact that he had so much early speed. In the race at Laurel, it just kind of fell into place. But (taking off the pace) was discussed.”
Based on his numbers and how he keeps handling more difficult assignments, it looks like Cruise the Nile can only get better.
“He continues to step up and handle things, and yes, I have been impressed by that,” Motion said.
The trainer said that he hadn't given much thought to the Dinner Party Stakes before the Henry Clark. He wanted to see if he could get by that test first. But now that Cruise the Nile is a stakes winner, Motion said he will take a look at what would no doubt be the toughest assignment of Cruise the Nile's career.”
“The Clark just seemed like the most logical spot for me to bring him into stakes company. I'm not sold on the Dinner Party just because it's another eighth of a mile, which he's not done before,” Motion said. “But I think there's a good possibility we could end up doing that. He handled the mile-and-a-sixteenth, so I guess I shouldn't worry about going another sixteenth. He's got a tremendous turn of foot. If there's not a more obvious option, we'll probably go to the Dinner Party, but I want to kind of see how it goes.”
Though keeping his options open, Motion isn't afraid to test his horse against tougher competition in the Dinner Party.
“The race that he won down there at Laurel was very good and his numbers have been consistently good,” Motion said. “I think he's up to it.”