Trainer Doug O’Neill was awake but dreaming early Sunday morning, a day after his trainee, Blended Citizen, registered a neck victory in Turfway Park’s Grade 3, $200,000 Jeff Ruby Steaks, a Kentucky Derby prep race. “We’re getting that Derby dream, of course,” he said from phone from his Santa Anita base. “He always worked phenomenal on the dirt, but his best races have been turf or synthetic. So naturally we’re wondering, can he be the next Animal Kingdom?” Animal Kingdom, meaning the 2011 Kentucky Derby winner who won the Jeff Ruby that year when it was called the Spiral.  He is the lone winner of the race to later take the Derby during the synthetic era at Turfway Park. Lil E. Tee also won both races in 1992, when Turfway had a dirt track. If Blended Citizen is to make the Derby this year, he may need to run in another Derby prep – something Animal Kingdom didn’t need to do in 2011. Graded earnings were the criteria to make the Derby when it oversubscribed in those days, although now the Kentucky Derby operates on a point-qualifying system and Blended Citizen is short on points with 22. He earned 20 for the Jeff Ruby and 2 for a third-place finish in the El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate on Feb. 17. It has taken more than 30 points to make the body of the race over the past two years, though tallies were smaller in the initial years of the Derby points qualifying system. The race often overfills. Not an original nominee to the Triple Crown, which O’Neill called “my fault,” Blended Citizen would be made a late nominee at a cost of $6,000 by the deadline on Monday, the trainer said. Although 10 times greater than the earlier $600 nomination, $6,000 is but a fraction of what the last two winners of Saturday's race had to pay when it was run later in March, past the $6,000 deadline. Both Oscar Nominated and Fast and Accurate had to be supplemented to the Triple Crown for $200,000 in 2016 and 2017, and didn’t recoup those financial investments with distant losses in the Kentucky Derby. Both finished 17th and didn’t return in either the Preakness or Belmont. Blended Citizen, a 3-year-old son of Proud Citizen, is a half-brother to Lookin At Lee, who ran second in the 2017 Kentucky Derby. He has struggled on dirt, running in the rear half of the field in three attempts on the surface when he began in the summer and fall of last year. By comparison, he has never been worse than fourth on turf or synthetic. With the Derby in his thoughts, O’Neill is hopeful that Blended Citizen’s progression is from racing experience and not the horse being more effective on turf or synthetic than on dirt. The colt has always trained well on dirt, he said. O’Neill was noncommittal Sunday on whether Blended Citizen would race back in another Kentucky Derby prep, this time on dirt, or if they would wait and hope that 22 qualifying points would be enough to gain entrance to the field. There are numerous stakes in which Blended Citizen could compete with seven weeks between the Jeff Ruby and the Kentucky Derby on May 5. Plans call for Blended Citizen to join a small string of horses that O’Neill has at Oaklawn Park before later shipping to Keeneland, where O’Neill intends to base 12-20 horses for the spring meet there that begins in early April. Two years ago O’Neill prepped Nyquist for a victorious run in the Kentucky Derby by training over the Keeneland track after the horse won the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park. The victory gave O’Neill his second Kentucky Derby win following I’ll Have Another in 2012. Blended Citizen received a preliminary Beyer Speed Figure of 83 for his Jeff Ruby Victory – a speed figure that could be adjusted pending evaluation of an apparent timing malfunction during the Jeff Ruby. If the speed figure remains unchanged or is not elevated by more than a couple points, the Jeff Ruby would rank as the slowest graded stakes race for 3-year-old males on a Beyer scale in 2018.