Our series continues with one of the most popular horses in training in the shape of the prolific California sprint star who has won 18 of 23 starts – and 13 of his last 14 – as part of the five-horse string of veteran trainer Eric Kruljac
Dynasties are dreary. Strikeouts are boring. But there is something about an unbeatable Thoroughbred that tickles the fancy and catches the eye, even though the horse could care less.
Win or lose, he will continue to find his feed tub filled at the appropriate hour and his bedding efficiently changed. Once in action, however, that special horse reverts to his nature. And if his people have done their jobs and all the variables are dialed just right, he will win again and again and again.
The Chosen Vron has become one of those special horses, winning 18 of his 23 starts and 13 of his last 14. All but one of his starts has come in some kind of stakes event, either graded, listed, or tailored to his status as one of 1,779 California Thoroughbreds foaled in 2018, and recognition has followed.
Four-legged phenomenon
The eastern reaches of racing’s social media have acknowledged The Chosen Vron as a four-legged phenomenon. Invitations have hit the desks of his four owners from far and wide. And one of those owners, trainer Eric Kruljac, has been paid perhaps the highest compliment possible for someone on the job.
“I’ve had other trainers call to ask me where I was running,” Kruljac said. “They want to run somewhere else.”
From The Chosen Vron, now six, there seems to be nowhere to hide. He has won in every month but August. He has won at mile around the oddly configured Los Alamitos course and at 6½ furlongs down the tricky hillside turf at Santa Anita. On the dirt at Del Mar, he has won at seven furlongs and one mile. On the dirt at Santa Anita, he has won at six, 6½, seven, eight and 8½ furlongs.
Beyond his daunting record, enhanced by earnings of $1.4 million, The Chosen Vron is an easy horse to embrace. He can be IDed at a glance, sporting a copper kettle coat, three white stockings, and a sturdy blaze that meanders southward like the map of Baja California.
There are only five or so horses in the Kruljac string, which gives TCV an air of the stable paterfamilias. He is a laid-back gelding who needs only as much training as it takes to keep him from getting bored.
Assistant Raul Armente sees to his every need, both on the ground and in the saddle. Come game time, The Chosen Vron is in the hands of Hector Berrios, the personable veteran from Chile, who is enjoying the ride of a lifetime.
Article of faith
He is also a homebred, an article of faith on the part of Kruljac and partners John Sondereker, Richard Thornb
urgh, and Robert Fetkin.
While the group was part of the Class Racing syndicate run by Joe Masino, they thought they landed a good one when they bought Tiz Molly, a daughter of Tiz Wonderful, for $25,000 in 2011 as a Keeneland September yearling, hoping to capture some of the success they’d enjoyed with stakes winners like Bauble Queen and Blingismything.
For $25,000, they got a pedigree that featured Bishop’s Delight, Tiz Molly’s third dam, who won the 1988 Petrify Handicap at Aqueduct for Allen Jerkens and Hobeau Farm and was good enough to finish third to Personal Ensign in the Shuvee Handicap, then a G1 event.
Roam a bit farther in the female lineage and you’ll come to Sorority Stakes winner Marullah, the granddam of Bishop’s Delight and dam of the Jerkens-Hobeau stakes stars Blessing Angelica and Handsome Boy.
Tiz Molly won her first two but lasted only six races before an injury ended her career. She ended up being owned by Kruljac, Sondereker, Thornburgh, and Fetkin as the Tiz Molly Partners, and was sent to leading California stallion Unusual Heat twice. Then, before either of those foals reached the racetrack, she visited Vronsky.
Though 18 at the time, Vronsky still carried the sheen of his backstory as a million-dollar yearling from the 2000 Keeneland September sale, bred and consigned by Arthur B. Hancock III and Stonerside Farm. Demi O’Byrne signed the ticket.
The colt was from the 18th crop of Danzig, one of the stallion stars of the Northern Dancer line. By turn of the century, Danzig already had been responsible for a dazzling array of significant sons and daughters.
Among them were champions, Classic winners, and stakes stars such as Dayjur, War Chant, Chief’s Crown, Dance Smartly, Stephen’s Odyssey, Lure, Pine Bluff, and Danzig Connection.
Tragic hero
Vronsky’s dam, War Of Words, was by Lord At War, winner of the 1985 Santa Anita Handicap, and it is impossible to name a horse with more creative flair. Count Alexei Vronsky is the tragic hero of Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, a passionate horseman so romantically addled by Anna that he causes the death of his favorite mount in a steeplechase race.
Vronsky made his racing debut for owner Steve Taub and trainer Tim Pinfield in a maiden race at Bay Meadows in May of 2002. By August he was in the care of Kristin Mulhall, and in his fourth start he was a maiden race winner on the grass at Santa Anita.
Vronsky ran seven more times over the next year and a half, winning only a pair of allowance races, then was retired to stand at Old English Rancho near the town of Sanger, just east of Fresno, in the heart of California’s San Joaquin Valley.
Vronsky’s first crop hit the ground in 2006. Among them was the graded stakes winner Norvsky. What A View, from Vronsky’s 2011 crop, won the G1 Frank E. Kilroe Mile and four other stakes. In 2018, the year after covering Tiz Molly, Vronsky was transferred to Harris Ranch, just down the road from Old English Rancho.
Unlike the tempestuous, tragic romance of literature’s Vronsky and Anna, who threw herself under a train, the Vronsky-Tiz Molly encounter at Old English was brief and to the point. The resulting foal was born on March 28, 2018. An undescended testicle prompted his gelding before he made his first start for Kruljac on Dec. 27, 2020, at Santa Anita.
Somehow, The Chosen Vron has let five losses creep into his record, just to prove he is human after all. After winning that maiden race, he was thrown to a pair of Bob Baffert wolves in the San Vicente Stakes and did well to finish third.
Three wins followed, two of them in graded company, before he ran up against None Above The Law in a Cal-bred stakes on July 30, 2021. The Chosen Vron finished a well-beaten second, but the effort looked much better after None Above The Law won the Del Mar Derby in his very next start.
The Chosen Vron ended his three-year-old campaign with a dash over to Turf Paradise to win the Hank Mills Sr. Stakes. He had to work harder than he should have, leading Kruljac to think there was something amiss. And there was, in a stifle.
Not too shabby
The Chosen Vron lost for the second time in the California Dreamin’ Stakes at Del Mar on Aug. 6, 2022. He had not raced for nine months, while recovering from a procedure to alleviate the stifle strain, and was going a mile and one-sixteenth on the grass. Finishing third, beaten a head and a nose, was not too shabby.
Historians will look back upon the field for the Pat O’Brien Stakes at Del Mar on Aug. 27, 2022, as a window to an unparalleled future. The G2 event at seven furlongs on dirt, included horses who would go on to win the Saudi Cup (Senor Buscador), the Dubai World Cup (Laurel River), the Hollywood Gold Cup (Defunded), and the Carter Handicap (Speaker’s Corner). The Chosen Vron finished a noble fifth, at 20-1.
Since the Pat O’Brien, he has lost only once in nearly two years. That was in the 2023 Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Santa Anita, when Tiz Molly’s boy could not quite cope with Elite Power, a finalist for Horse of the Year, and Gunite, the only horse to beat Elite Power during the season. For finishing fifth, The Chosen Vron earned his people $60,000, which was some consolation.
As a palate cleanser, The Chosen Vron popped up two weeks after the Breeders’ Cup to win the Cary Grant Stakes at Del Mar.
Overwhelming choice
Not surprisingly, he was an overwhelming choice as 2023 California Horse of the Year. He has endorsed the honor with four perfect starts during 2024, most recently an encore score in the Thor’s Echo Stakes at Santa Anita on May 25.
Thor’s Echo, a fellow Cal-bred, won only five of 28 starts, but one of them was the 2006 Breeders’ Cup Sprint. That is the race Kruljac and his partners covet most, and the date – Nov. 2, 2024, at Del Mar – to which they are pointing.
First, though, there will be a defense of The Chosen Vron’s title in the G1 Bing Crosby Stakes at Del Mar on July 27.
On the day before The Chosen Vron’s successful debut, on opening day of the 2020-21 Santa Anita meet, Kruljac won the G2 San Antonio Stakes with Sondereker’s Kiss Today Goodbye. The idea that there was a better horse in the barn at the time was a little far-fetched.
“I was getting to the point that it might be time soon to step away, and turn everything over to Ian,” said Kruljac, referring to his son, Ian Kruljac, an accomplished trainer in his own right. “I started out as a bloodstock agent, so I could always stick around doing that.”
Even without The Chosen Vron, Kruljac would still own to 1,230 winners. At one time he had his own private investigation agency, while doing a bit of horse breeding on the side. He was raised on a farm in Carmel Valley, on California’s Central Coast, and eventually gravitated toward racing in Arizona, where he trained his first winner in November 1986 at Turf Paradise, a claimer by the name of Funchal.
Both Kruljacs have hit the heights on the big stage. Ian won the 2016 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint at Santa Anita with Finest City, who was later proclaimed female sprint champion, while Eric took the Cal-bred filly Leave Me Alone into the Saratoga lion’s den to capture the 2005 Test Stakes by 7¾ lengths against runners trained by Bill Mott, Bobby Frankel, Todd Pletcher, and Nick Zito.
Even so, the aura surrounding The Chosen Vron is like nothing Kruljac and his partners ever have experienced. As a regional star, he summons memories of Louisiana’s Hallowed Dreams or New Mexico’s Peppers Pride, the key difference being the four graded stakes wins decorating his record.
Neither does the trainer treat his horse like crystal – he went right back to work with a breeze two weeks after the Thor’s Echo – although Kruljac insists it is The Chosen Vron making most of the decisions.
Credit to the horse
“Give all the credit to the horse, not the trainer,” he said. “We don’t train on him real hard at all – three-eighths or a half, and then let him train himself after that.
“We found out pretty early that he’s push-button. He’s kind of a lean dude who keeps himself fit and does more in the gallop-outs than he does in the works. They don’t come around like that too often.”
If at all. Racing fans who have been locked onto The Chosen Vron over the past three seasons continue to make room on the bandwagon for anyone new to their hero, who stands out from the cream of the Southern California crowd in his own way.
With a dozen Santa Anita stakes wins alone, The Chosen Vron has equaled the total accumulated by the fabled gelding John Henry, trained by Kruljac’s idol, Ron McAnally.
“I know it sounds crazy, but I don’t have one win picture of him yet,” Kruljac said. “I think we’re waiting until its all over, even though we don’t know when that will be.”
Until then, the next stop is Del Mar. Kruljac is savoring every moment of the ride, with good reason. “I’ve been fortunate to have a companion these last couple of years,” the trainer said.
“Her name is Jane Palmer, and she’s the leader of The Chosen Vron’s fan club. She has a wall about 30 feet high by five yards long where she’s going to put a giant picture of the horse someday.
“To have a relationship like that in your early 70s makes you want to hang around for a while,” Kruljac added. “That, and a horse like The Chosen Vron.”
• Read all Jay Hovdey's features in his Favorite Racehorses series
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