Hamilton, Lawrence Hoping to Bring Hardware to Maryland
Hamilton, Lawrence Hoping to Bring Hardware to Maryland
New Journeyman Hamilton Up for Eclipse as Champion Apprentice
Lawrence-Trained Glorious Empire Vying for Male Turf Champion
48th Annual Ceremony Thursday, Jan. 24 at Gulfstream Park
LAUREL, MD – While an Eclipse Award was far from anyone’s mind when Glorious Empire finished sixth in his seasonal debut at Laurel Park last April, Weston Hamilton had but one goal when 2018 began – to bring the cherished bronze trophy home to Maryland.
Their paths will converge when the 48th annual ceremony is held for the seventh straight year Jan. 24 at Gulfstream Park, as both Hamilton and Glorious Empire are among the favorites to be named champions in their respective divisions.
Hamilton, 20, led all apprentice riders with 862 starts, 118 wins and $3.43 million in purse earnings in 2018, riding with the bug through Dec. 21. He is joined as a finalist by California-based Edgar Morales and Reylu Gutierrez, who rode briefly at Laurel in the fall.
“It’s an honor and it is a blessing and it’s a dream come true. I’ve been chomping on the bit all year and trying to do my best and get the job done as much as we could. Being a finalist is just amazing, and it’s breathtaking just being able to go to Florida,” Hamilton said. “Win it or not, it’s a great opportunity and just a blessing to be able to go. I’ve never even been to Florida before. It’s going to be a good trip, man. I got a bunch of family going. It’s going to be crazy. It’s going to be a real adrenaline rush for sure. I’m so ready. I’m ready to go.”
Youngest son of journeyman rider Steve Hamilton, a winner of nearly 1,400 races also based at Laurel and currently working his way back from a back ailment, Wes Hamilton is attempting to become the 11th Maryland-based rider to win the Eclipse as top apprentice – a group led by Hall of Famers Chris McCarron (1974) and Kent Desormeaux (1987) – and the first since Victor Carrasco in 2013.
“I took it day by day but I had it in the back of my head a little bit. I didn’t show it too much,” Hamilton said. “I had known that a lot of Maryland jockeys have won the Eclipse Award and that was one of my main goals this year, to try to be a finalist. I kind of set my goals a little high. I thought that was a little high expectations from when I first started but it came together and it’s a dream come true. I can’t even think straight right now, I’m so ready. I’m excited.”
Hamilton finished second or tied for second in wins at each of Laurel’s three 2018 meets, and already this year won the $100,000 Nellie Morse Stakes Jan. 12 aboard Dale Capuano-trained Timeless Curls. Jockey and trainer teamed up to win 46 of 157 races (29 percent) last year.
“He works hard, that’s one good aspect about him. He’s not afraid to work. He listens to what you tell him to do and tries to ride them the way you want them ridden. He rides aggressive, he rides hard, so you can’t ask for much more than that out of a jock,” Capuano, a winner of more than 3,400 career races, said. “It’s not like it was given to him on a silver platter; he had to work for it, and he did. So, he deserves all the success he gets, that’s for sure.”
Matt Schera’s Glorious Empire joins Expert Eye and sprinter Stormy Liberal as Eclipse finalists in the male turf category. British-bred Expert Eye won the Breeders’ Cup Mile (G1) in his only North American start last year, while Stormy Liberal won four of seven starts, two in graded-stakes, capped by the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint (G1).
Glorious Empire won three graded-stakes in 2018 – the Sword Dancer (G1) and Bowling Green (G2) at Saratoga and the Fort Lauderdale (G2) Dec. 15 at Gulfstream, a field where all 13 horses were graded-stakes winners, five of them in Grade 1 company.
“Very honored, very exciting, so happy for the horse. A former claimer that was ready to be retired being up for a possible Eclipse Award is a pretty amazing story. What an honor to have had him come my way. Unbelievable,” Fair Hill, Md.-based trainer James ‘Chuck’ Lawrence II said. “Our stomachs are turning with the ‘what-ifs’ if we win. It would be just a huge accomplishment and what an honor.”
Glorious Empire was beaten 3 ¼ lengths by multiple graded-stakes winners Caribou Club and Doctor Mounty and Phlash Phelps, a four-time winner over the local turf, in the Henry S. Clark Stakes April 21 at Laurel – his first start in seven months and first for Lawrence. He won an optional claimer at Delaware Park prior to his successive Saratoga stakes wins, and set the pace before being eased to last over a soft course in the Breeders’ Cup Turf (G1) Nov. 3.
“Up until when he won the Sword Dancer there was no thought of an Eclipse Award,” Lawrence said. “The plan when he was sent to me was to make Saratoga [and] win claimers up there, but the horse showed me so much talent that I was the one that kind of pushed Matt into the first stake up there. After he won that, in the winner’s circle Matt said, ‘I know what you’re thinking. It’s not happening.’ But we talked ourselves into the Sword Dancer and the rest is history.
“When we ran in the Breeders’ Cup, of course we were hoping for a better result; he just didn’t like the soft ground there,” he added. “Somebody called after the Breeders’ Cup and said we were in the running for the Eclipse Award because it’s such an open division. Matt and I talked, and the horse was doing so well, we thought let’s go try to win the Fort Lauderdale and it worked out. There was strategy in it at the end of the year.”
At one mile, the Clark was the shortest of five 2018 starts for Glorious Empire, who had primarily sprinted prior to joining Lawrence. He gradually stretched out to 1 1/8, 1 3/8 and 1 ½ miles before ending the year in the 1 1/8-mile Fort Lauderdale.
“He’s an incredibly talented horse. It was just a matter of making him happy and getting things worked out. Happy horses win races and he just loved what he was doing, that little extra distance,” Lawrence said. “I think before everybody was sprinting him because he’s so fast, which you can see, and when Matt sent him to me he thought about running the horse five-eighths of a mile because the horse is incredibly fast. If you can take that speed and turn it off, you can see what the results were in those races.”
Lawrence and Schera had hoped to run Glorious Empire in the $7 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational (G1), North America’s richest grass race, Jan. 26 at Gulfstream, but he is recovering from a minor injury and being pointed to a summer 2019 debut.
“He has a little suspensory and we’re giving him time off for that. We’re lasering it right now and it looks really good,” Lawrence said. “We’re hoping to have a summer campaign, a late summer campaign, with him. [We’ll] give him time off and hopefully kind of hit the same path we did last year, just probably about 35-40 days later than we did last year.”
