PrintMay ’tis the season for triple ’chasing wins, and jockey Richard Bou-cher became the latest lucky winner of a hat trick at the Radnor Hunt Races, including the $50,000 hurdle feature, on May 21 in Malvern, Pa.
Riding Mede Cahaba Stable’s gray Complete Zen, Boucher followed along behind Magalen Bryant’s Triplekin (Brian Crowley) for most of the running. Boucher kept the son of Cozzene out of trouble, but Triplekin wasn’t as lucky.
With only a few fences to go, Crowley’s mount tired in the soft going, leaving Complete Zen to hook up with Andre Brewster’s All Together (Xavier Aizpuru) for a long head-to-head stretch battle to the wire.
The finish was so close that it took officials several minutes of reviewing the tapes before they named Complete Zen the winner by a nose. It was the 5-year-old’s second novice win this season. He beat All Together in another stretch run at the Atlanta Steeplechase in mid-April.
Trained by Boucher’s wife Lilith, Complete Zen has been a nice surprise for the couple, as well as Mede Cahaba Stable’s longtime jumper owner, Mignon Smith.
“Zen is a homebred out of a really nice flat mare, Complete Number,” Lilith said.
“We and Mignon had pretty high hopes for him, and it’s all starting to come about. “The two of them [Complete Zen and All Together] are both so good that you just never know how it will end up,” she added.
“On another day it could have been All Together. As long as they make the conditions for these races, these two are going to be at it for some time, I think.”
The two novice titans have faced each other several times in stakes races, but at Callaway Gardens (Ga.) last November it was All Together who had Complete Zen beat at the wire. “He’s a tough horse,” Richard said of All Together.
“I wasn’t sure I had it, but this is my horse’s kind of course because it’s right-handed.”
Most courses at hunt meets run counterclockwise like major tracks, but Radnor officials switched directions in the late 1990s and have kept their course right-handed ever since.
“Zen likes a wide-open track,” Richard said. “He seems to like that direction. He’ll change leads for me, but he always seems to have his weight on his right front, so he’s always going right-handed. I’m not sure if he’ll like the shorter sharper turns of Saratoga [N.Y.]. We’ll have to see as we go along.”
She’s Back
Richard’s quiet manner as a rider sold trainer Regina Welsh on the idea of putting him up on her timber mare Won Wild Bird. The 9-year-old gray gave the jockey his second win of the day, in the $40,000 timber feature, and simultaneously made a little history of her own.
