$200,000 CALIFORNIA CHROME CAL CUP DERBY STAKES QUOTES

JOCKEY QUOTES

UMBERTO RISPOLI, MICI’S EXPRESS, WINNER: “I knew this horse has some ability. I saw him run on the undercard on Breeders’ Cup day and he was way behind and came on. I rode him at Los Alamitos and that race was too slow and he did not like it. Steve (Knapp) thought the horse would be more competitive with blinkers on. We had a good pace today and I still had plenty of horse coming for home. We got in the clear and he did the rest. I thought he was more relaxed today. This horse could turn out to be a good one.”

TRAINER QUOTES

STEVE KNAPP, MICI’S EXPRESS, WINNER: “We got a patient ride today. If you look at his last race at Los Alamitos, this horse has fired every time and then when I saw the fractions on the race, 24 and one in the first quarter and 24 and two in the second, he didn’t really have much chance at all. If you look at the PP’s it was a speed biased track, so that’s why he didn’t really fire last time. I had been thinking about putting blinkers on him for several races because my rider kept telling me to put the blinkers on him and the reason I didn’t, was because he was running so well, and I hate to tinker with things when something is going well but after that race, I decided to put them on.”   

OWNER QUOTES

TOM HALASZ, MICI’S EXPRESS, WINNER: “I’m on cloud nine, I love it! To just think about it, you win the California Chrome Cal Cup Derby, now that’s one of my favorite horses of all time and I won the race I love it.  All of my horses are Cal-bred, I have 35 Cal-breds in the Cal-bred program, it is great, it is the perfect place to run, the purses are great, the fields are good. I love being with Steve Knapp and honestly, we are having more fun than we can stand.”

NOTES: The winning owner is Tom Halasz.