Pin Oak Stud, a week removed from winning Colonial Downs' $500,000 Virginia Derby with Incredibolt, tries to secure a Kentucky Derby berth with a second horse as Chaos Agent tackles a full field in Saturday's $777,000, Grade 3Jeff Ruby Steaks at Turfway Park.
The excitement of having a pair of such talented 3-year-olds comes mixed with the devastation from the unexpected death of Pin Oak co-owner Jim Bernhard just four months ago. Bernhard and his wife, Dana, bought the historic farm in Kentucky's Woodford County in November 2022 after the death of owner Josephine Abercrombie.
"We are what we are because of my dad's leadership," Pin Oak vice president Ben Bernhard said by phone Wednesday.
Incredibolt, as the Virginia Derby winner, picked up 50 points toward Kentucky Derby qualifying and is virtually assured a spot in the 20-horse field on May 2 at Churchill Downs. Meanwhile, the 1 1/8-mile Jeff Ruby offers 100 Derby-qualifying points to the winner and 50 to the runner-up.
However, there's a chasm from an experience standpoint between the Riley Mott-trained Incredibolt and the Josie Carroll-trained Chaos Agent. Incredibolt won Churchill Downs' Grade 3 Street Sense on Oct. 26, the fifth race on the Derby points schedule. The Virginia Derby was his fifth career start, with three wins. Chaos Agent's only start was winning a 1 1/16-mile maiden race over Gulfstream Park's Tapeta surface on Feb. 5 at 11-1 odds. He's 10-1 in the Jeff Ruby morning line, for which Stark Contrast is the 5-2 favorite in the field of 12 3-year-olds off two stakes victories sandwiched around a good second in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf.
Incredibolt came into the Virginia Derby off a disappointing sixth-place finish in Gulfstream Park's Grade 3 Holy Bull Stakes.
"It was great to see him come back and run that way," Ben Bernhard said. "We always thought he could run that way, but after the Holy Bull, you just never know. We have all the confidence in the world in him, and it's great to see him actually do it on race day."
Chaos Agent, who began his racetrack career training over Woodbine's all-weather surface with Carroll's Toronto operation, would seem to face a larger hurdle in the Jeff Ruby. That field includes John Battaglia runner-up by a neck Fulleffort, along with stakes winners Argos (Woodbine's Grade 1 Summer), Black Hornet (Fair Grounds' Black Gold) and Two Out Hero (Woodbine's Soaring Free) and stakes-placed Medici, Maximus Prime, Turf Star and Baytown Dreamer.
Every other entrant in the field possesses at least three starts. However, Chaos Agent's 94 BRIS speed figure tops the field.
"Having won on synthetic, one of the logical next steps was to consider the Rushaway or the Jeff Ruby," Bernhard said, referring to the $250,000, 1 1/16-mile Rushaway on the Jeff Ruby undercard. "He ran a big number in his maiden, and if you're a numbers person, he looks competitive in the Jeff Ruby. We barely sneaked in; we were the last one to get in the race. Had we not gotten in, we would have gone to the Rushaway. I don't think Derby points were the main reason; this was just the logical next step, having won on synthetic. But that's a nice benefit as well."
"It's a lot to ask to step up into a pretty competitive field in the Jeff Ruby after having only run one race. Every other horse in the race has a ton of experience, but we think highly of him. We think he has a shot."
Chaos Agent will try to become the fifth graded-stakes winner for Pin Oak under the Bernhard family ownership, joining Incredibolt, World Beater (last year's Grade 1 Saratoga Derby and Grade 3 Old Dominion Derby for Riley Mott), Geaux Rocket Ride (Grade 1 Haskell in 2023 for Richard Mandella) and Parchment Party (Grade 3 Belmont Gold Cup in 2025 for Bill Mott).
Jim Bernhard, 71, passed away three weeks after Incredibolt's Street Sense triumph. He was one of Louisiana's most influential business leaders, an entrepreneur and philanthropist who liked to say "the best has no equal."
The horse-loving Bernhards already had a band of Friesians when Jim bought wife Dana her first Thoroughbred yearling at the 2021 Fasig-Tipton Kentucky July sale for her birthday. That $350,000 purchase became Geaux Rocket Ride. The next year, they purchased Pin Oak, acquiring an additional 465 acres from Adena Springs in 2023 to bring the total size of the farm to 1,250 acres. Ben said the goal is to develop Pin Oak back into a full-time and self-sustaining breeding and racing operation, as it was for decades under Abercrombie.
In a short period of time, Pin Oak has returned to prominence, including becoming an industry leader in racehorse aftercare. All Pin Oak horses that are not suitable to breed go to Pin Oak Louisiana to be retrained for second careers. The horses are adopted out, with all proceeds going to the Thoroughbred Retirement Network of Louisiana.
Everything traces to Jim Bernhard, his son said.
"He laid out the vision, but he was also extremely active and played a very hands-on role, with the decision-making and everything these last two to three years," Ben said. "He was also great at building people up, enabling them to go forward and to get the best out of people, to teach them how to reach their full potential. So in that way, he's left a mark on every single person he worked with while he was here.
"It's just unbelievable that he's not here for it," he said of Pin Oak's recent success. "He always knew the right thing to tell people, what they needed to hear. It's easy to just get lost in work, keep your head down and do the work day in and day out. And he would always remind me, 'Don't forget to have fun.' And that's the one thing he was about; if we won a big race, he was all about not taking it for granted, enjoying it in the moment and trying to have fun. Yeah, it's hard to do that without him here."
But yes, he said, even with all the emotion, the family had fun at the Virginia Derby.
Now comes Chaos Agent's chance to be in the spotlight. Hall of Famer Joel Rosario comes in from Gulfstream Park to ride.
"Chaos Agent is a horse that is lacking experience, but seems to have a great deal of talent," Carroll said via text. "I am excited to be part of the Pin Oak team that is committed to carrying forward Mrs. Abercrombie's vision and that of Jim Bernhard."
Even should Chaos Agent win the Jeff Ruby, another option May 2 at Churchill Downs would be the $1 million, Grade 1 American Turf for 3-year-olds, Ben Bernhard said.
He said they have never run two of their horses in the same race, "but for a race like the Kentucky Derby, I think we'd certainly consider an exception to that rule.
"It's so difficult to get a horse in the Derby. Not only do you have to have a horse that's good enough, the timing has to work out perfectly. The first horse we had was Geaux Rocket Ride. He was second in the San Felipe and was getting ready to run in the Santa Anita Derby and just got a fever the morning of the race. He ended up beating the Derby winner (Mage) in the Haskell but didn't get a chance to be in the Kentucky Derby. And then we had Parchment Party. He just had some super minor sort of 2-year-old stuff and needed some time on the farm.
"You need a little bit of luck, and you need to stay healthy, you need to be peaking at the right time. And so we're certainly not taking it for granted. We're just trying to soak it all in."
Chaos Agent, a son of WinStar's Constitution stallion Independence Hall, cost $350,000 as a Keeneland September yearling, while Incredibolt cost $75,000 at the same sale.
"We have a big team," Ben Bernhard said. "We have a number of data products we look at to provide us with different numbers. We look at those numbers to try to knock some horses off the list. We have a great team of horsemen who can look at a horse and tell you things that the data won't. We have a pedigree program that we're building with my company, Stable Analytics, that's not yet on the market but will be soon that primarily looks at pedigree and mitochondrial DNA. We take all these inputs and try to come up with a price in mind where we think it makes sense.
"If we buy a horse, that means they jumped through all of our hoops. Sometimes it ends up being by a premier stallion, and sometimes it's one that's under the radar."
Ben Bernhard literally is a rocket scientist, holding an electrical engineering degree from the University of Notre Dame and a Master's in space engineering from the California Institute of Technology. He worked at Space X for two years. One of his focuses at Pin Oak is bringing new technology and modern data science into the farm's operations and business strategy. Stable Analytics is a tech startup specializing in horse racing technology development and data analysis. From the time they get their earliest training to a saddle and bridle as yearlings, Pin Oak horses all are equipped with wearable sensors developed by Bernhard to detect tiny variations in their stride. Those discrepancies, invisible to the naked eye, may signal the need for further evaluation in order to catch little problems before they morph into an injury.
So when someone says horse racing isn't rocket science, Ben responds, "Sometimes it's more difficult than rocket science.... If it were all a math problem, it would be a lot easier."
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