	products recent interviews FastScripts archive about ASAP Sports

Our Clients:

Browse by Sport

Find us on

Subscribe to RSS

Click to go to
Asaptext.com

View our
e-Brochure

BREEDERS' CUP WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS

October 25, 2008

ARCADIA, CALIFORNIA

ERIC WING: Okay. We are live in the interview room with the winners of the second Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile, and that was Albertus Maximus. On the left is trainer Vladimir Cerin, and in the center is one of the co-owners, Marianne Chase. And congratulations to you both.
Marianne, I'm going to start with you. This horse had been trained by Gary Mandella and Vladimir has had the pleasure of training him. This was his third race under Vladimir's care. Seems to have been a good decision that you made.
MARIANNE CHASE: Sometimes things like that work out for the best. Although it's always sad to move a horse somewhere else, and they were very good to him. And they did the very best they could. Gary loved the horse, and it was really with a very heavy heart that I moved him.
But we felt, I think both Gary and I felt, that we were going backwards with the horse. We couldn't really figure him out. We thought it was one thing, and then another thing.
Finally, sometimes by changing what you've been doing, new eyes look at the horse and his talents, or non-talent, whatever if the case may be, and Vladimir just had the key.
ERIC WING: Vladimir, so you were presented with something of a puzzle. Here you are three races later, a Breeders' Cup winner, your first Breeders' Cup winner. What was the key with Albertus Maximus?
VLADIMIR CERIN: I have no idea. When Mrs. Chase called me, I didn't know who she was. I had never talked to her before. She asked me if I knew the horse. I said, Of course, everybody knows that horse.
He's just a magnificent physical specimen. And I didn't know she was going to ask me to train the horse. I had no idea what we did. We just took care of him like we do the other horses and he seemed to blossom.
But he is the best looking horse here. There is no horse that will match his physical ability, and his physical look.

Q. Coming into the race, the favorite was Well Armed. You ran a very nice third, beaten less than two lengths behind him. Did you think if you could just somehow make up those two lengths, you would have a shot against the whole field let alone Well Armed?
VLADIMIR CERIN: I thought we ran a winning race last time. We just got a little too far back. The horse went too wide. It was just a matter of circumstances. I felt if we had a cleaner trip, we would have prevailed today.

Q. How did you decide to send the horse to Vladimir if you didn't have a prior relationship with him?
MARIANNE CHASE: Well, I did a little bit of homework for a change, and not being led for my emotions. I had never spoken to Vladimir in my life. I had seen his kind face whenever I had a winner, saying congratulations, and that was the extent of our whatever. I read about him. I read about his interest in modern kind of treating horses, and knowing from transferring from human athletes to animal athletes, horse athletes. And I figured he's going to be the one for my horse. He needs some help.

Q. You graduated from UCLA with a degree in Kinesiology. I know from time to time you like to employ some of the same principles where appropriate to horses. How does that work, and did any of it apply to Albertus Maximus?
VLADIMIR CERIN: Yeah, we use a number of modalities that humans use. I've also purchased and installed at my farm a hyperbaric chamber. And he did have a visit after his last workout to help him recover a little bit.
Yeah, you know, I'm 54 years old, 53, hard to keep track (laughing), but I try and learn something every day of my life. And the education at UCLA helped me to learn, to learn, and I hope I never stop learning about horses, about exercise physiology, or taking care of them.

Q. How long does a horse stay in a hyperbaric chamber? Is it like an MRI, where they're in and out, or do they stay in there longer?
VLADIMIR CERIN: About 75 to 90 minutes. Almost every single one of them - we've had one that didn't like it - they just walk in, and somehow they can taste the oxygen, which I can't, and they like it. They know it's good for them.

Q. It's all a matter of helping them recover after the race?
VLADIMIR CERIN: Yeah, any kind of a disease state that you have, oxygen seems to help.

Q. Your horse ran magnificently today.
VLADIMIR CERIN: Thank you.

Q. And once he got rolling, it was clear he was going to win. But the fact remains, Well Armed came up with a very poor race. And this is kind of an oxymoronic question, if Well Armed had fired, do you think you could still have beaten him?
VLADIMIR CERIN: Let me answer it this way, we weren't running against Well Armed. We were running against 11 competitors in the Breeders' Cup mile, the most important mile race in the world. And the other 11 came second, third, and so on. There was one horse that was clearly dominant.

Q. What is your horse racing background? Can you just kind of go over how you got into the business and so forth?
MARIANNE CHASE: I come from a small country in Scandinavia called Denmark. And I was always riding horses from early childhood. I was jumping and dressage, and at one point in my life, I rode thoroughbreds on our track in the morning in Klampenborg, which is, compared to this, a mini, mini, mini track. And my love for horses has always been there. It's just probably the most important thing in my life besides my family.
So it's always been there. My daughter, the same. It goes from mother to daughter and so forth. So we're all involved in horses.

Q. And how many horses do you own?
MARIANNE CHASE: I know that's such a tough question, because I always lose track. I've got brood mares in Kentucky. I train everything, and I breed everything in Kentucky. And we have a program in Kentucky from where we are at, a farm called -- an old farm called Clovelly (phonetic) Farm in Kentucky. They do an excellent job with the brood mares, the weanlings stay there until they're turned over to Charlie and Amy LoPresti who, in their own rights, are fantastic people. Charlie is a public trainer at Keeneland and they work together as a husband-and-wife team.
Thanks to them, we get these nice horses shipped in here. We don't ship them in unless they feel they want to come to California. Usually we don't ship them in until their early 3 or very late 2. I'm sort of not too fond of racing 2-year-olds unless they are really big horses.
I think their bones are not mature. I think they're like spaghetti too early. And I usually sit with them until I feel, now they're ready to go.

Q. Have you given any thought to next year for Albertus Maximus?
VLADIMIR CERIN: We have given it many thoughts, but Mrs. Chase and Mr. Chase and I will sit down together and at an expensive dinner, and discuss them at length and try to make a really good plan. The one thing we did agree on is we would give him a little break after this race.

Q. Have you agreed on the fact that he will run next year and it's a matter of where? Or is that part of the dinner conversation?
VLADIMIR CERIN: That's part of the dinner conversation.
MARIANNE CHASE: In my opinion, he should run next year. I think we should keep the horses around for the fans. I think it's the best thing we can do for this sport, which is not exactly blooming, but today it is. But we need to do everything to keep those fans coming.

Q. Can you explain in layman's terms how a hyperbaric chamber works? How it helps them recover?
VLADIMIR CERIN: As quickly as I can, most disease processes and injuries are anaerobic in nature. They thrive in the absence of oxygen. Bone healing, tendon healing requires a lot of oxygen, but has poor blood supply, so very little oxygen get there's.
The hyperbaric chamber brings in oxygen at 95 to 98% as opposed to 20, ambient in this room, under 2, two and a half atmospheres. So it forces it in.
So it's really something that just speeds up your way of healing. If you're sore, you recover a little more quickly. If you have a broken bone, the literature suggests that it heals more quickly.
I think the most famous example in sports is Terrell Owens who had his own chamber and recovered in half the time the doctors said with his broken, I think, fibula.
ERIC WING: Vladimir Cerin, Marianne Chase, congratulations on a terrific performance Albertus Maximus.
VLADIMIR CERIN: Thank you very much.
MARIANNE CHASE: Thank you so much.

End of FastScripts

ASAP Sports, Inc. | T: 1.212 385 0297