Time Is Flying By For Umberto Rispoli, Riding The Wake Of Journalism’s Success
The Italian has the Breeders’ Cup in his sights as he works happily through the challenge of keeping his ‘home’ business firing amid a season of increased out-of-state travel.
THEY SAY the days are shortening. It’s been featured in National Geographic, the New York Times, CNN and CBS News: scientists talking about the earth’s quickened rotation and problems for atomic clocks. July 10 this year lost 1.36 milliseconds; August 5 could lose 1.5 of those miniscule time bites.
That’s not really news to Umberto Rispoli. He might not have the time to be overly familiar with details like how many leap seconds have been added to coordinated universal time (UTC) since 1972 – it’s 27 and there might be no more – but he knows all about modern life’s time deficit. Never mind milliseconds, there aren’t enough hours in his day.
“I don’t even have time to look at myself in the mirror right now,” he tells Idol Horse. “I just try to put my head down and try to achieve as many good races as I can and focus on the job.”
The Italian resident of Southern California is on the move even as he talks. His family has been with him in San Diego for the Del Mar meet, but this weekend he will be across the country in upstate New York for important rides at Saratoga. That means he is taking his wife Kimberley and sons Hayden and Aramis back to their home in Los Angeles before heading back down to Del Mar the week after.
The summer meet will end there on September 7, then it’s back to Santa Anita for Rispoli before a return to Del Mar again in early November for what could be an exciting book of Breeders’ Cup rides headed by his G1 Preakness Stakes hero, the Michael McCarthy-trained Journalism.
Journalism is the horse that has defined Rispoli’s season and in turn altered what time feels like to him. The G1 Santa Anita Derby win, the G1 Kentucky Derby second, the controversy-stoking, burrowing, brave Preakness victory, the G1 Belmont Stakes defeat and then victory again in the G1 Haskell Stakes at Monmouth.
“I won the Haskell two weekends ago but to me it feels like it was already two months and most people have already forgotten about it,” he says, referencing the non-stop roll of the summer meets and the extra travel that comes with success.
“You want to celebrate and enjoy the moment, but there’s no time to do that, you just need to move on. The good thing is there are good races right now at every moment, so we really focus on the next ride, that’s what we look for and we’re happy for that: it’s busy but it’s a good position to be in.”
He is in a car with his agent Matt Nakatani as he talks into his phone. It’s the day after he rode one of his star mounts, Formidable Man, to win the G2 Eddie Read Stakes. Next up are not one but three Grade 1 rides at Saratoga: chief among them, certainly for sentiment, is Johannes in the Fourstardave Stakes.
Rispoli has a profound affection for Johannes. Defeat when second in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Mile cut deep into his emotions; he wants amends. Johannes, though, has not raced since winning a Grade 2 at Santa Anita in December and will be first-up at Saratoga after recovering from bone bruising.
“I’m happy Johannes is coming back right now,” he says. “It’s another challenge, another good horse to ride.
“I worked him a couple of weeks ago at Santa Anita before we moved to Del Mar and he’s in great condition. I don’t really think he’s 100 per cent, he’s maybe going to be around 80 per cent after so long, and I think that’s normal. The target is later in the year, at the Breeders’ Cup.
“He’s coming back for the first time in a Grade 1 after a long lay-off, against some nice horses, so it’ll be interesting how he handles the track at Saratoga and the travel, but so far I was very pleased with his work, he looks like he remembers how to do it, so I’m very pleased.”
There was a time when Rispoli, 36, would have taken just one big-race ride on a major day out of state, so his three Grade 1 mounts hints at the elevation of his profile in the last 12 months. In the G1 Test Stakes he will ride Look Forward, the filly that gave him a win in the G2 Eight Belles Stakes at Churchill Downs in May and was second in the G1 Acorn last time; he will also partner the Italian runner Juwelier in the G1 Saratoga Derby.
“I saw Look Forward again this morning around the track, Michael (McCarthy, her trainer) is happy with her,” he says. “It’s a tough race, but seven furlongs, with the one turn, I think she will like that.”
Rispoli was pencilled in to ride Juwelier in the G1 German Derby during his recent family holiday to Europe, which included a stop-off to see his father-in-law, the star jockey-turned-trainer Gerald Mosse at his Chantilly stables. But the headstrong Juwelier was also booked in for the Arqana Sale and sidestepped the Hamburg classic to ship to the United States.
“I saw Juwelier’s videos and he’s a horse that can be brilliant, but he can be strong, he can be aggressive,” he says. “I think it’s about if I can settle him through the first part of the race, then if that is the case I think he will have a live shot.”
All the travelling back east this spring and summer is what Rispoli wants for his career, but there’s a price to pay too.
“Look, I only won one race in the last four days at Del Mar, but I rode full cards every time at Santa Anita until April 5, and that’s because I’ve been travelling around,” he says. “Basically, when you travel around you lose some horses. You need to try to go to ship out and when you need to go to ride at the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont, that’s all a part of the game.
“If you ride out of town, you lose horses, you lose business at home,” he emphasises and one can almost hear the shrug in his voice. “But I’m happy, because I’m travelling and riding good horses, I’m winning big races, so you lose the quantity but you keep the quality.
“At this stage of my career, I think it’s a great reward to go and ride good horses like Journalism, Johannes, Formidable Man, Look Forward all shipping out of town to run in the biggest races in the country. My year so far looks fantastic: probably the best in the U.S. I’ve ever had.”
He hopes it’s just the start. At the high summer point, he has the Breeders’ Cup ahead of him in the fall, on home soil again at Del Mar. That means one prep run is likely for Journalism going into a showdown in the Breeders’ Cup Classic with his Derby and Belmont conqueror Sovereignty and the older stars including last year’s one-two in that race Fierceness and Sierra Leone, and the 2023 winner White Abarrio.
Rispoli will get a Saratoga trackside view of Fierceness, Sierra Leone and White Abarrio when they go at it in Saturday’s G1 Whitney Stakes. But he wouldn’t swap Journalism for any of them.
“I will always respect Sovereignty: he’s beaten Journalism twice so on paper obviously he is on top of Journalism,” he says. “But people forget that on the sloppy, like it was in the Derby, he’d be a better horse than me; the second time, in the Belmont, I was coming back after three weeks off a rough Preakness. I think you put those things together and run against a fresh horse, a champion like Sovereignty, you have to be absolutely at your peak.
“I think to find who is the best three-year-old in the country, it would be great to see them compete when both are at the top of their energy without any excuses.
“But we’re happy with our horse, he really showed his class and really performed in a way that we were expecting when he came back five weeks after the Belmont, shipped out again for the Haskell and won. It’s great horses that do that, not good, great. I think he deserves tons of respect.”
That’s something he feels a small portion of folks aren’t giving the horse.
“A lot of people love him, he’s become the people’s horse,” he says, “but on the other side I see some disrespect for him. People forget that every time he goes to compete with the good horses, he has to get on the plane and that takes energy away from him, it takes something away.”
Rispoli says he doesn’t know what Journalism’s Breeders’ Cup prep run will be: “I’m not the owners, I don’t know what they’ll do; I think everything is on the table,” he says.
If that’s so, then a glance at the programme says the colt could step out next in the G1 Pacific Classic at Del Mar or the G1 Goodwood Stakes at Santa Anita, or perhaps ship out again to something like the G1 Pennsylvania Derby before having the terms switch around, with the big guns coming to California, to his home patch.
“It’s a big advantage to have the Breeders’ Cup at home,” Rispoli admits.
As he speaks, he apologises: he has to make a quick stop to pick up something. He’s gone about a minute and a half, then returns hurriedly. Again, time is tight.
“I really can’t complain, though,” he says. “There’s not much time these days, but at the end of the year, we’re going to put down on the table all the achievements and that’s the time then when we say ‘Ok, that’s what we achieved,’ and we’ll be happy with that.
“Right now,” he adds, “I’m riding good horses, I’m in good shape, I’m winning races and that’s all that matters.” ∎
