Bear Fan Poised to Defend Title at Laurel

Blake Heap finished schooling Bear Fan in the Laurel Park paddock early yesterday afternoon and then, walking her back to the barn, wondered if his boss, Wesley Ward, would show up to watch the mare run today.

"He's talking about coming, but you never know until you see him. He's a real easygoing guy," said Heap, who has handled Bear Fan's preparation for the Grade II $200,000 Barbara Fritchie Handicap, while Ward tends to 40 other runners at the Palm Meadows training center in South Florida. "It surprised me when he said he might be coming. He shouldn't come up [to Maryland] in that cold when he could stay in Miami. She should win."

Ward, 37, who lives just outside of Los Angeles, calls Bear Fan the second-best horse he has ever trained, next to Unfinished Symph, who gave him his first stakes victory in 1994 and finished third that year in the Breeders' Cup Mile.

Bear Fan, a 6-year-old daughter of 1992 Preakness winner Pine Bluff, traveled across the country to win the Fritchie last year, then reeled off three more impressive stakes victories on her way to finishing the season with $496,180 in earnings.

As the even-money favorite to beat nine other runners and defend her title, Bear Fan is the star of Laurel's Winter SprintFest weekend, which also includes the $125,000 John B. Campbell Breeders' Cup Handicap for older horses this afternoon and the Grade II $200,000 General George Stakes on Monday.

"I bred her and raised her since she was a baby. She's very special to us," said Ward, who trains mostly in California but lately has turned his attention to racing at Gulfstream Park.

Ward is a complete horseman with a lineage to match. One grandfather was a blacksmith and the other, the late Jim Dailey, was a popular outrider at New York racetracks. His father, Dennis, who trains a string of his son's horses, was an apprentice jockey who married Dailey's daughter and brought her back to his family home near Longacres, a race track in Washington state.

Heap's father was a trainer at Longacres, too, and Ward galloped horses for him as a boy.

"When he was 14, he was the little biddiest [thing] you ever saw," Heap joked about Ward. "He was like 85 pounds."

But he knew how to ride. In 1984, Ward won an Eclipse Award as the leading apprentice jockey in the country, winning 335 races and earning more than $5 million in purses. He won riding titles that year at Aqueduct, Belmont Park and the Meadowlands. By 1989, however, Ward had sprouted to 5 feet 11 and no longer could make weight.

"I look like a linebacker now," he said.

Heap, 11 years older than Ward, said the two have been best friends since Ward was a teenager. When Ward quit riding and turned immediately to training and breeding, he begged Heap to join him.

Heap had done well on his own, training Zany Tactics, who set a world record at six furlongs in 1987. Still, he decided to throw in with Ward because he had grown tired of the headaches that go along with being in charge of other people's horses.

"Since I went to work with Wes, I don't have the pressure -- the IRS, the payroll taxes, the vets. I can just concentrate on the horses," Heap said.

If Bear Fan wins the Fritchie, she has an invitation to compete next month in the $2 million Golden Shaheen, a straightaway sprint on the undercard of the $6 million Dubai World Cup, the world's richest horse race.

Retired local star Xtra Heat won the Barbara Fritchie in 2002 and the following year, each time using the race as a steppingstone to the race in the United Arab Emirates. Ward knows the Shaheen well, having finished second in the 2001 race with an 8-year-old gelding named Men's Exclusive.

"I think she's better than him," said Ward, who still hadn't decided late Friday whether to fly to Maryland for the chance to get his picture taken in the winner's circle.

Racing Notes: Don Six, a New York-based six furlong specialist attempting to stretch his speed to seven-eighths of a mile, was named 9-5 favorite for the General George by Laurel linemaker Frank Carulli. Don Six led gate-to-wire winning the Paumonok Handicap in his last start at Aqueduct.

Local runners in the race include Gators N Bears (4-1) and Tim Tullock's Bocca Al Lupo (20-1).