Dan Hendricks Race Quotations

I'd like a nice easy race out of him. I don't need a taxing one. We wanted to settle him down between races this time. His last two workouts were phenomenal, and it's really exciting to watch him.

Lying in a hospital bed, I had a lot of time to think about everything. When you look at a horse race and you look at the fighting in Iraq, it puts things into perspective.

He's got good speed, but it might be a good race for him to sit off the pace a tiny bit.

We'll take him over to the paddock and school him this afternoon with the fourth race if it isn't raining.

We knew we didn't have any chance, but it was a good experience. You could even say it's a bigger race now. I imagine there will be a little more attention on us this time around.

Everything with the horse seems to be right where we want it to be. He's fresh and going into the race with what I hope is a lot more in reserve. He seems to be advancing -- and he needs to.

Every race is an education for a race horse. But this is a $750,000 Grade I race.

We'll have to train a little harder now. We'll be training for the toughest race to win in the world.

I have some advantages going into this race. I just hope that it all works out. The Juvenile was a one-turn race; this is different and it's not the ultimate goal for either horse, but it would be a nice, fun race to win.

The next race will be either the San Rafael Stakes (a Grade 2, $150,000 race Jan. 15 at Santa Anita) or your race. It's $100,000 more up there. The grade isn't important; what matters to me is another $100,000. We'll see how he's doing for the next couple of weeks and how the weather is.

It was a very encouraging race last time. He went wide and ran big. I was very surprised he ran that race.

It's fun. Like I've always said, I'd rather have the favorite going into any race than a 20-to-1 shot. There's a first time for everything and this is a lot of fun. I just hope we can sustain it, keep it going and stay healthy.

If I could have mapped it out, he couldn't have done any better. It was a nice, easy race on him and he did it in racehorse time.