David Cassidy on the Web
Mayan King could give Cassidy yet another hit
March 23, 2005
The Courier-Journal
By By Jennie Rees
David Cassidy is the managing partner for Mayan King, who will run in Turfway's Lane's End Stakes.
If David Cassidy were to attach one of his songs to his 3-year-old colt Mayan King, the longtime entertainer and former teen heartthrob said it would be "I Think I Love You."
He said his first thought last year when he laid eyes on the son of Stephen Got Even was, "This is a horse who can win the Kentucky Derby."
An important proving ground will come in Saturday's $500,000, Grade II Lane's End Stakes at Turfway Park, where the 2-for-2 Mayan King could face a field of 10.
Cassidy briefly spoke to a reporter while attending the Ocala Breeders' Sales auction in Florida yesterday morning with trainer Gary Contessa. That's the same auction at which Contessa picked out Mayan King last year.
The singer said Contessa was the only guy to have a stopwatch on Mayan King when the colt dumped his rider and ran off the wrong way, knocking off eighth-miles in a startling 101/5, 102/5 and 102/5 seconds.
The fact that Mayan King then ran into a fence at full-speed scared off a lot of people, said Cassidy, who got him for $210,000 with partners Ed Lipton and Our Canterbury Stables.
"I don't really buy colts; I breed horses," said Cassidy, who sold the mare In Neon when she was in foal to Storm Cat and carrying the standout filly Sharp Cat. "But I saw this horse and said, 'You know, I have to have this horse.' Had he not thrown the rider, he'd have brought a half-million at least."
The chestnut Mayan King will try to one-up his dad in trying to capture the Lane's End in his third career race. The Nick Zito-trained Stephen Got Even won what then was called the Galleryfurniture.com Stakes in his fourth career start, then was 14th in the 1999 Derby as the 5-1 second choice.
A wrenched ankle days before Mayan King was to run at Saratoga delayed his racing debut until this year. He won a six-furlong maiden race over Aqueduct's inner track on Jan. 28, then a month later captured a two-turn mile allowance race at the same track.
"Now we're asking him to go a mile and an eighth 30 days later," said Cassidy, the managing partner who has turned down a seven-figure offer for the colt. "It's a lot to ask a horse with a lack of experience. But he doesn't have a lack of talent or heart."
Mayan King will face stakes winners Spanish Chestnut (Grade II San Rafael), Andromeda's Hero (Sam Davis), Magna Graduate (Battaglia) and Texcess (Delta Jackpot) and graded stakes-placed Wild Desert and Diamond Isle in one of the better Lane's End fields in recent years.
If Mayan King finishes first or second -- "or if there's trouble" -- he'll either run in Keeneland's Coolmore Lexington or train up to the May 7 Derby, Cassidy said.
Cassidy -- who lives in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., near Mayan Drive -- said he has dreamed of having a Derby horse ever since watching Native Dancer on television as a tyke. He says he left shooting "The Partridge Family" to watch Secretariat in the Preakness and soon thereafter bought his first mare.
"I've done just about anything one can do in the entertainment business, from starring on Broadway, starring on television, playing in front of 70,000 people singing in concerts," Cassidy said on a national conference call. "They're great thrills. But it's been my passion my whole life breeding race horses. . If I could win the Kentucky Derby, there would be nothing on the face of the earth -- nothing, other than the birth of my son 14 years ago -- that would compare to the thrill and the high of it."
Cassidy will miss the Lane's End because of a performance at Connecticut's Mohegan Sun Casino. But, he emphasized, "I'm free May 7."
