Champion Wise Dan working towards 2015 return

Connections to the two-time defending Horse of the Year are targeting a return to the Breeders' Cup in 2015, when old man Wise Dan is expected to race at age 8 and defend his home Keeneland turf.

According to an ESPN report this week, the gelding is recovering from a fracture in his right-front canon bone well, now walking the shed row every day.

"Looking at the X-rays the other day, we're remarkably happy with the way that thing has healed," trainer Charlie LoPresti told ESPN this week. "Unless something flares up that I don't know about, or that injury rears its ugly head again, the prognosis is good."

LoPresti will soon move Wise Dan, who also overcame a colic scare last May following his win in Churchill Downs' Woodford Reserve Turf Classic, to Lexington's Forest Lane farm for his regular winter break from training.

The son of Wiseman's Ferry went 4 for 4 in 2014, also with victories in Keeneland's Maker's 46 Mile, Saratoga's Bernard Baruch Handicap and the Shadwell Turf Mile, also at Keeneland. His second setback of the year, a non-displaced fracture that didn't require surgery, was discovered about a month before the Breeders' Cup, where he was expected to defend his Turf crown.

"I could have run that horse in the Breeders' Cup, but I didn't want to do it because I didn't think it was the right thing to do," LoPresti told ESPN. "He probably would have won the race, but what he would have done to his ankle might have been irreparable."

Jonathan Lintner writes for The Courier-Journal, a Gannett company.