Aqueduct: Few willing to go Stymie's distance, race fails to fill

Adam Coglianese/NYRA

San Pablo runs Saturday in the one-mile As Indicated, which is replacing the 1 1/8-mile Stymie on the card.

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – What a difference a furlong makes.

The $75,000 Stymie, on the stakes calendar since 1956 and run at 1 1/8 miles since Canonero II won it in 1972, was not carded as scheduled for Saturday. The primary reason was the distance.

Replacing the Stymie as the feature on Saturday is the $75,000 As Indicated, which will go at one mile. The As Indicated was initially scheduled for Thursday.

Three of the five horses entered in the As Indicated were nominated to the Stymie, but only San Pablo and Isn’t He Perfect were going to run in the longer race. By using the As Indicated instead, the race drew Marilyn’s Guy, Linebacker, and Day of Destiny.

San Pablo, trained by Todd Pletcher, will likely go favored in the As Indicated. A 4-year-old son of Jump Start, San Pablo has won 5 of 7 career starts, including three straight. He won two stakes at a mile and 70 yards over the inner track, including a 4 3/4-length score in the Shots Are Ringing Stakes on Jan. 14.

San Pablo drew post 2 and will be the 123-pound highweight in the As Indicated under Cornelio Velasquez.

Marilyn’s Guy returns to the races for the first time since March 26, when he finished second in the Harrison E. Johnson Memorial at Laurel Park. Trained by Steve Asmussen then, he is now in the barn of Tony Dutrow.

Linebacker was claimed for $25,000 by Patricia Farro and MAT Stables out of a runner-up finish at Parx on Feb. 7.

The As Indicated will go as race 4 on a 10-race Aqueduct card.

Pretty Boy Freud injured, retired

Pretty Boy Freud, who had developed into a stakes winner since being gelded and turned back to sprinting, has been retired after suffering a sesamoid fracture during a workout Wednesday morning at Belmont Park.

Pretty Boy Freud was breezing in preparation for a start in Monday’s $75,000 Hollie Hughes Stakes here. In the final furlong of the half-mile breeze, jockey David Cohen felt something amiss with the 6-year-old gelding and pulled him up. Pretty Boy Freud was vanned off the training track and taken back to trainer Leo O’Brien’s barn, where he was diagnosed with a fractured sesamoid to his left foreleg. O’Brien said that Pretty Boy Freud would survive, but he would not race again.

“He was a nice horse when he was right,” O’Brien said. “He gave us some nice thrills last year.”

Pretty Boy Freud won the first race on Travers Day at Saratoga last year, returning $102.50. He followed that up with a 6 1/2-length victory in the Corma Ray Stakes at Belmont, where he upset the odds-on favored entry of Driven by Success and Be Bullish.

Pretty Boy Freud retires with a record of 5-7-6 from 28 starts and career earnings of $286,347.

O’Brien said the horse would likely be retired to his owner Suzann Bobley’s farm in Saratoga.

More Than Love may try Polytrack

Trainer John Terranova won last year’s Grade 1 Ashland Stakes with Lilacs ‘n Lace, a 48-1 shot who had finished fourth in the Bourbonette Oaks at Turfway park in her previous start.

Terranova may use the Bourbonette Oaks as a stepping-stone to the Ashland with his Grade 3-winning turf filly More Than Love.

More Than Love, who won last year’s Grade 3 Miesque Stakes on turf at Hollywood Park, made her 3-year-old debut in the Florida Oaks on Feb. 4 at Tampa, where she was beaten a nose by Dixie Strike.

Terranova said Wednesday that More Than Love raced a little green in that race, but came out of it well. Since turf horses have a record of success on synthetics, he may run her next in the Grade 3, $100,000 Bourbonette Oaks at Turfway on March 24.

“She came back really well out of the race,” Terranova said Wednesday. “She was kind of green, she followed the lines of the turf course in midstretch and went out several paths before the wire and just got nailed.”

Claims surpass 300, $5 million at meet

There have now been more than 300 claims made at the Aqueduct meet, with the total amount spent surpassing the $5 million mark.

Entering Wednesday’s card, a total of 298 horses had been claimed with a total of $4.972 million being spent.

The claims of Fiscal Stimulus and Raynick’s Jet in the opener brought the number claims to 300. The claims of Ellipse, Papa’s Nice Cat, and War Colony out of the sixth brought the total claims to 303 and the total money spent to $5,042,500 since the inner track opened Nov. 30.

The spike in claims is fueled by the purse increase that began in late December, with $7,500 claimers running for purses between $26,000 and $30,000.