Afleet Alex: rising legend Mid-Atlantic-based runner wins 130th Preakness—with performance like none before him.

It’s simple. You’re either up or you’re down. The body reacts—an instant cringe—heels sink, hands tighten, back goes rigid. If you’re up, it’s quicker than a hiccup, and you get back to riding, no time to think about what just happened. If you’re down, you try to get small so the rest of the field doesn’t hit you flush.

Afleet Alex and Jeremy Rose should have been down—were down—when Scrappy T jolted to the right as they spun out of Pimlico’s far turn on May 21.
Horses clip heels every day— this was a shoulder block.

Somehow, Afleet Alex stayed on his feet, stabbing his right front leg in the ground like a pole vaulter, tail straight up for balance, nose inches from the ground. In half a stride, he was down, like a lawn dart. The next half he was up, barely a blip in his locomotive stride, on his way to an emphatic score in the 130th Preakness.

Owned by Cash is King Stable and trained by Tim Ritchey, Afleet Alex sped off to win by four and three-quarters lengths over Scrappy T, with Kentucky Derby winner Giacomo another five lengths back in third.

A record crowd of 115,318 saw the race, the stumble, the recovery.
It’s how legends are made.

Not that Afleet Alex needed props. His story had it all, long before he played Lazarus in the Preakness.

A surrogate mother, a band of neophyte owners, a hardscrabble trainer, a pesky jockey and a lemonade stand.

Afleet Alex’s dam Maggy Hawk couldn’t produce milk, so breeder John Martin Silver­tand’s then 9-year-old daughter Lauren gave the foal his first nourishment from a bottle. Twelve days later, a nurse mare was found, and Afleet Alex thrived like any other foal on Silvertand’s Florida farm.

Consigned to the 2004 Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-year-olds in training sale at Timonium, Afleet Alex attracted Mid-At­lan­tic trainer Tim Ritchey, who had an order from a new client. Chuck Zacney had called Ritchey in the fall of 2003 to say he wanted to get in the game.

Ritchey, who gets calls like this all the time, gave Zacney his number and figured he’d never hear from him again. In April, Zacney called Ritchey and they went to lunch.
“ We hit it off,” Ritchey said. “He’s a really nice guy, and we think a lot alike on a lot of things. I wasn’t really taking on new clients but I said, ‘Yeah, absolutely, we’ll claim a horse, buy some horses, whatever you want.’

“ It’s fate. I believe in luck, fate and destiny,” Ritchey added.
Zacney, from Upper Provi­dence, Pa., had put together a five-member syndicate, Cash is King Stable, in April 2004. All five owners live in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Zacney, 44, the stable’s managing partner, is the founder, owner and president of The Sirrus Group, a regional medical billing company based in Oreland, Pa. He and his wife Carol have a 6-year-old son, Alex, and daughters Amanda (19) and Casey (9).

The other members of the group are Robert Brittingham of Collegeville, Pa., and Joseph Lerro of Langhorne, Pa., both of whom work in real estate; Joseph Judge, a New Jersey resident who is director of patient accounts for Lourdes Health Services in Riverside, N.J.; and Jennifer Reeves of Philadelphia, vice-president of The Sirrus Group.

Zacney went to Timonium with Ritchey to buy a race horse. Ritchey loved Hip 559, consigned by Robert Scanlon, a bay colt by the third-crop sire Northern Afleet out of the Hawkster mare Maggie Hawk. A full brother, Unforgettable Max, won $162,964 and hit the board in two graded stakes.

Ritchey raised his hand at $75,000—thinking he wasn’t even halfway there—and the hammer fell. It was May 18, 2004.

“ He was tops on my list. I had four colts picked out, and he was number one,” Ritchey said. “I didn’t think I’d get him bought, to tell you the truth. I just waited for him and thought we’d have to go a lot higher than $75,000.”

Ritchey shipped the stout colt to his barn at Delaware Park, and had him ready to roll for his debut, six weeks after the sale. Ridden by Jeremy Rose, Afleet Alex won a Delaware Park maiden special weight by 11 1/4 lengths.

Rose, a standout high school wrestler from Bellafonte, Pa., who started riding races in 2000, knew Afleet Alex was special from the day the horse popped his head over the screen in stall 14 in Ritchey’s barn.

“ He was as lead-pipe a cinch as I’ve ever sat on. I figured I could get left in the gate, fall off, and he’d drag me around there and still win,” Rose said last summer. “From the first day, he felt beautiful. He has an eye that you can see there’s some thinking in there, but not too much thinking. He’s always been perfect in everything. He relaxes and finishes.”

Afleet Alex relaxed and finished in a subsequent double-digit allowance score, and then wheeled into Saratoga, winning the Sanford-G2 and the Grade 1 Hopeful.
In the fall, Afleet Alex finished second in the Grade 1 Champagne and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Stakes, and ultimately lost the Eclipse Award to Declan’s Moon.
As his friend John Servis did with Smarty Jones in 2004, Ritchey opted for Oaklawn Park and a spring campaign that would climax with the Triple Crown.

After his colt suffered rough trips in the Champagne and the Breeders’ Cup, Ritchey went for experience, replacing Rose with 2004 Eclipse Award-winning jockey John Velazquez. Rose, 26, took the news graciously, and went to Oaklawn, riding races for Ritchey and breezing Afleet Alex as if he were still his horse.

Afleet Alex won the six-furlong Mountain Valley, under Rose, before going off as the favorite in the Rebel Stakes-G3 under Velazquez. Afleet Alex retreated like a whipped dog in the Rebel, finishing last. A lung infection was blamed, but Velazquez was gone—opting for the Todd Pletcher-trained Bandini in the Blue Grass—and Rose was back.

The Arkansas Derby-G2 was always tagged as Afleet Alex’s final prep and after the Rebel debacle, it was his last chance to get back on track for the Derby. Afleet Alex bolted home by eight lengths, setting him up as a legitimate threat in the Derby.

The 20-horse Derby field encased Afleet Alex, who sat comfortably in the middle of the pack before making a rally that couldn’t quell the stamina of Closing Argument and Giacomo. Afleet Alex lost by a length. It was Giacomo’s day.

A late-running son of Holy Bull, Giacomo had two horses behind him on the first turn in the Derby, but that’s exactly where you had to be on that day.
The Derby triggered more speed than a night card at Los Alamitos. One by one, they retreated while Giacomo threaded his way through the field like the tail of a kite on a windy day.

At 50-1, Giacomo upset the Derby. Owned by Jerry and Ann Moss, the gray colt entered the Derby still eligible for a first-level allowance race. He left as the only horse who could be the Triple Crown winner.

For 39-year-old jockey Mike Smith, the win was sweet satisfaction for time served on a long and bumpy ride to the top. Smith rode Holy Bull in the 1994 Derby—the frontrunner never got untracked, and Smith never got over it. Giacomo helped.

“ Last year, running second again [on Lion Heart], I started to wonder,” Smith said. “I said, ‘Man, I honestly believed that I would already have won three by now.’ Yeah, it plays in there, but when I met this guy, man, I knew there was hope again. That’s the honest-to-God truth. You can ask [trainer] John [Shirreffs]—it’s our Derby, and he’s going to redeem his father’s name and he did it.”

For Shirreffs, it was sweet satisfaction for sticking to a life plan while never breaking into stardom. The 59-year-old had his first Derby winner with his first Derby starter—following Barclay Tagg in 2003 and Servis in 2004.

“ When we landed, following the horse to Churchill Downs and we’re behind the van, just thinking how. . . what a great feeling to come back to Ken­tucky with Giacomo, running in the Kentucky Derby, going to Churchill Downs off the plane,” Shirreffs said. “Almost brought tears to my eyes, thinking here’s a Ken­tucky-bred horse, and he’s going to the biggest race in Ken­tucky. Sort of spectacular. I don’t know, it’s a great feeling.”

For Ritchey, the race was hard to digest, even though his horse ran huge and had no real excuse. When a man says, “You can’t look back. . . ” you can be sure he’s looked back—a lot. But there was nothing of consequence—the horse had a good trip, ran hard and came back sound.

The Preakness, in Ritchey’s home state, would be the next stop. Ten Derby starters returned for the Triple Crown’s second leg, and bettors latched on to Afleet Alex’s tactical speed and consistency, sending him off as the favorite in the 14-horse field.
Oh, how right they were.

Rose deftly guided Afleet Alex from the 12-hole to the inside, slashing to the rail as the field went under the wire the first time.

Derby retreads High Limit and Going Wild went at it on the lead, while Scrappy T, fresh off a score in the Withers Stakes-G3, tucked in third under Ramon Dominguez. Afleet Alex and Giacomo lobbed along in 10th and 11th as they went down the backside.
Scrappy T took over the lead while Rose maneuvered Afleet Alex through the field, getting a magical trip while Giacomo steadied behind a gallery of horses. Everything that had opened in the Derby for Giacomo seemed to be closed in the Preakness. Rose sent Afleet Alex inside of Greeley’s Galaxy, and as they turned for home, only the unheralded Scrappy T, trained by Robbie Bailes at Delaware Park, stood in the way.

Aiming for the outside of Scrappy T, Afleet Alex was flying when Dominguez wound up and hit Scrappy T lefthanded, which literally turned him sideways onto the landing strip where Afleet Alex had already signaled.

“ Son of a bitch,” was all Ritchey could say as he stood among the Cash is King syndicate in the second tier of box seats.

In an instant, the horse was back on his feet and back in gear. Ritchey took a deep breath, almost expressionless.

“ He’s going to win anyway,” the trainer said.
And he did just that.

The Cash is King partners had experienced the pinnacle, the abyss and the pinnacle again—all in a quarter-mile.

And to think, they’ve had serious offers for the horse since the day he broke his maiden. Instead, they turned Afleet Alex into a movement. Zacney named the horse after his son Alex. When Afleet Alex started winning, Zacney came upon a young girl, Alexandra (Alex) Scott, who was diagnosed with neuroblastoma, an aggressive childhood cancer.

Scott started a lemonade stand for pediatric cancer research, and Zacney immedi­ately donated money to Alex’s Lemonade Stand and continues to give a portion of Afleet Alex’s winnings to the fund. Alex Scott lost her fight with cancer last August, but she raised more than $1.6 million, and Alex’s Lemonade Stands were at the Derby and Preakness.
Sure the horse runs for Cash is King Stable, but he has a bandwagon worthy of the Rose Bowl Parade.

“ It’s a tremendous story, every aspect of it,” Ritchey said. “From when he was an orphan to the little girl with cancer, there are so many positives to the story. He’s a great horse, he’s a champion horse. I don’t see anybody out there doing things like he does. Hopefully we’ll run him as a 3-year-old and a 4-year-old and let everybody enjoy him.”
Ritchey, who celebrated his 54th birthday on May 27, certainly enjoyed his first venture onto the Triple Crown trail.

Born in Pittsburgh and now an Elkton, Md., resident, he gradually worked his way up from Waterford Park (now Mountaineer Park) through Penn National to a quality base at Dela­ware Park. A former show jump rider who also dabbled in steeplechasing, Ritchey trained two-time Maryland Million Classic winner Docent (2002 and ’03) and won the 1999 Pennsylvania Derby-G3, but Afleet Alex is in another stratosphere.

“ He’s a once-in-a-lifetime horse. I’ve had some pretty good horses, but he out-worked Docent when he was 2, and Docent’s a pretty nice horse. He’s an amazing animal,” Ritchey said. “There will never be another one like him, not for me. He does things so easy. He’s the only horse I’ve ever been around that I’ve never seen shy, spook, jump. At the Preak­ness, the Derby, all the stuff, nothing fazes him.”

Ritchey swears Afleet Alex’s aplomb comes from his days with Lauren Silvertand, drinking milk from a Coors Light bottle. It was there for Ritchey to see at the sale when the horse walked up and down the Timonium macadam like he owned the joint. It’s there when the horse bounces to the front of the stall every time someone comes near his screen. It was there throughout the Derby and the Preakness donny­brook, when he made like the mayor, gliding through it all with a smile and a wave.

“ He has total trust in people. He was raised for 12 days by people and he just bonded. He has such faith and trust in people, because he’s never been abused or mistreated; he doesn’t know any different,” Ritchey said. “You don’t see that in people with people, where two people have that total trust. I imagine if you’re going into battle or something, but I’ve never had that relationship with anything that’s living. I have that with him, and I’m sure Jeremy has that with him. It’s an amazing feeling.”

No one knows the feeling like Rose. Ritchey says Rose thinks the horse is from the planet Krypton. After his drop and pop in the Preakness, he might just be.
“ I talked to him quite a bit. I told him he did it. He got his respect, and he deserved it,” Rose said. “It didn’t bother him. I don’t think anything bothers this horse. People were chanting his name, screaming, hollering, he was soaking every minute of it up. He did something champions do today.”