[Kasept]

Deal reached to point Gun Runner to Pegasus, Ruis says
By Matt Hegarty

Gun Runner, the 2016 Clark Handicap winner, will start in the $12 million Pegasus World Cup on Jan. 28 in the slot owned by Mick Ruis Sr., provided the horse clears quarantine at Fair Grounds in New Orleans in the next several days and is allowed on to the grounds of Gulfstream Park in Florida, Ruis said late on Thursday night.

Ruis said that he reached a deal with the co-owners of Gun Runner just recently, and that he had a discussion with an official at Gulfstream on Thursday afternoon indicating that the horse would be allowed on to the track grounds provided the horse tests negative for equine herpesvirus and clears other protocols. Ruis Sr. would not name the official of Gulfstream he had talked to.

Gun Runner has been stabled at Fair Grounds all winter. The track has had two horses tests positive for the neuropathic strain of equine herpesvirus, a highly contagious disease, toward the end of last year, leading to a general quarantine of the backstretch. With no horses testing positive for the more dangerous strain of the disease since Dec. 31, that quarantine could be lifted for most of the barns on the backstretch as early as Saturday, according to the Louisiana Department of Agriculture and Forestry. The draw of the Pegasus is on Monday.

Early on Thursday, P.J. Campo, the general manager of Gulfstream, said that no one had contacted him yet about whether the track would allow in horses from Fair Grounds if the quarantine is lifted.

“I haven’t discussed it with upper management, but we’d definitely have to see [Gun Runner] test negative, along with everyone else in that barn,” Campo said. “And we’ll go with what the state vets are saying.”

Gun Runner, who has been trained by Steve Asmussen in recent weeks as if preparing for the 1 1/8-mile Pegasus, had been on the short lists of Pegasus slot owners for most of last year, but the quarantine at Fair Grounds seemed to dim his chances of participating in the race. Still, some slot holders had held out hope that the horse would be released from the track in time to participate in the race.

Doug Cauthen, a representative of Three Chimneys Farm, which owns Gun Runner with Winchell Thoroughbreds, did not return a phone call on Thursday.

Ruis said the partnership agreed not to release details of the deal to start Gun Runner. Ruis and 11 others purchased a starting slot in the Pegasus last year for $1 million each, with the right to market the slots as each owner saw fit. The winner’s share of the Pegasus is $7 million, with second receiving $1.75 million, and third $1 million.

Gulfstream Park is owned by a private company controlled by Frank Stronach, who owns a slot to the Pegasus and his pointing his homebred Shaman Ghost to the race. The idea to hold a race in which owners fund the entire purse with marketable starting slots was Stronach’s.

Ruis, an ex-trainer, had earlier designated a horse he owns, War Envoy, as his starter in the race. If Gun Runner is able to run in the Pegasus, War Envoy, which made his last start in an optional claiming race, will start in the Poseidon Stakes, a $400,000 race on the Pegasus undercard open to horses designated by Pegasus slot owners as back-ups for their slots in the race.