Eye on the Sky

So on the one hand we’ve got Country Star – and everybody knows about her. But on the other mitt there’s Sky Mystic, who might be the Stealth filly for this year’s Kentucky Oaks.

The daughter of the Pulpit sire Sky Mesa out of the black-type producer Delicacy (she by Derby and Preakness hero Pleasant Colony) has made a little ripple in California’s Bay Area, which normally isn’t enough to earn a trip to the big time in Louisville for a day-before-the-Derby spotlight performance. But the man who trains her – fellow named Greg Gilchrist – is giving it a ponder and just might wind up giving it a try.

If he does, there’s reason. The 60-year-old horsemen doesn’t do things lightly, as he showed back in the ‘60s as a young man when he joined the Army. Now there are lots of nice, safe jobs in the Army, and with a serious shooting war going on in a place named Vietnam you’d have thought young Gilchrist might have sought one of them out. Uh, uh. They boy signed on for the 82nd Airborne Division and spend a good portion of 1968 and 1969 jumping out of airplanes, helicopters, foxholes and most anything else they brought his way. Happily, he made it back home in one piece and returned to the place where he’d been born and raised – the racetrack.

A third-generation horseman, Gilchrist knows about serious and knows about horses, too, and he might well have his hands on another nice one with Sky Mystic. Going in, as they say, she had a right. The trainer took an old friend and sometimes client – David Heerensperger – to a sale at Calder last year and got him to write a couple of checks for a couple of fillies. One was an Indian Charlie miss named Indyanne who went two-for-two in 2007, including a tally in the Bay Meadows Debutante, before going to the sidelines with a little chip. The tab for her was $375,000. The other was Sky Mystic and the final bid there was $400K. When she came running last Saturday to win a photo in the California Oaks at Golden Gate – her third win in five starts – Gilchrist may have exhaled slightly. The pressure on him was a little lighter, for sure. Trainers will tell you the heat is hottest in this business when they've gotten an owner to shell out big bucks for one, only to find out the object of their affection has a case of the slows.

But the ungraded California Oaks is one thing; the Grade I Kentucky Oaks is quite another.

“Oh, yeah,” says the trainer, “we’re talking about a big step up – I know. But we’re thinking that way some right now. I’m looking for another race for her; maybe something in mid-March or early April. And if she’d do OK there, well…."

“I believe in taking those baby steps with them," he adds. "One at a time. She’s the kind that will run all day, I know that. They don’t write races longer than she can run. So we’ll see. I don’t know that I want to go down to Santa Anita and throw her in the deep end of the pool (Santa Anita Oaks) just yet. Baby steps remember. But we’re looking around and we just might find a way to get to Kentucky.”

Gilchrist did some investigating and found out the Kentucky Oaks closes for nominations on February 16. He also now knows it only costs a man $100 to drop a filly’s name in that hat. And you also should know that he knows his way around good horses; yes he does. He’s handled some nifty hides you might have heard of along the way --- four-legged flashes with names like Soviet Problem, Lost in the Fog and Smokey Stover.

So if Mr. Gilchrist drops in, keep an eye out. Even if he isn’t packing his parachute.