Irvin S. Naylor’s Black Jack Blues, who dominated two stakes races last fall and was honored with the Eclipse Award as America’s champion steeplechase horse, topped the 2011 National Steeplechase Association Theoretical Handicap, prepared annually by Director of Racing Bill Gallo Jr.
Black Jack Blues was rated at 158 pounds in the 20th annual Theoretical Handicap, which gauged all 34 horses who placed in NSA open and novice stakes races in 2011. That rating is somewhat below the average of annual highweights since Gallo created the first Theoretical in 1992. Eclipse champion Lonesome Glory holds the record at 170 pounds in 1995, and all but two other highweights have been ranked at 160 pounds or higher.
Black Jack Blues also was the NSA’s Lonesome Glory Champions Award winner as the year’s leading earner with $171,000 in purses from his two victories in two starts since his arrival from Wales over the summer.
Trained in both his U.S. starts by Joseph W. Delozier III, Irish-bred Black Jack Blues won the $35,000 Dorothy Fred Smithwick Stakes at the Virginia Fall Races in Middleburg on Oct. 1 and then confidently crushed an outstanding field in the $250,000 Grand National (Gr. 1), the season’s richest race, in Far Hills, N.J., on Oct. 22. He missed the year’s finale, the $100,000 Marion duPont Scott Colonial Cup (Gr. 1) on Nov. 19, because of a minor respiratory infection.
Second in the Theoretical Handicap rankings was Naylor’s Tax Ruling, weighted at 156 pounds. He won two Grade 1 races, a second consecutive victory in the $150,000 Calvin Houghland Iroquois and the Colonial Cup.
Ranked third at 154 pounds was William Pape’s Divine Fortune, who scored his second consecutive win in Saratoga Race Course’s $75,000 A. P. Smithwick Memorial (Gr. 2) and was second in the Colonial Cup.
Holding the fourth spot was Sarah and Ken Ramsey’s Slip Away, the 2010 Eclipse Award winner and Theoretical Handicap highweight. In a limited campaign, the Skip Away gelding finished second to Tax Ruling in the Calvin Houghland Iroquois for the second straight year. He was rated at 152 pounds, two pounds below his 2011 ranking, which was the lowest ever for a highweight.
Fifth on the list at 150 pounds was Naylor’s Decoy Daddy, who won three stakes races, two of them graded, in his 2011 campaign.
Here is the complete list for 2011:
2011 NSA THEORETICAL HANDICAP
Black Jack Blues (Ire) 158
Tax Ruling 156
Divine Fortune 154
Slip Away 152
Decoy Daddy (Ire) 150
Country Cousin 148
Dirar (Ire) 148
Pierrot Lunaire 148
Arcadius 146
Sermon of Love 146
Sunshine Numbers 146
Your Sum Man (Ire) 146
Mabou 144
Organisateur (Ire) 144
Spy In The Sky 144
Left Unsaid 142
Nationbuilder 142
All Together 140
Complete Zen 140
Dynaski 140
Here Comes Art 140
Demonstrative 138
Lake Placid 138
Port Morsbey 138
Italian Wedding 138
Fealing Real (Ire) 136
Swagger Stick 136
Triplekin 136
One Giant Step 134
Dictina’s Boy 134
Good Request 134
Straight To It 134
History Boy 132
Wantan (Arg) 132