Alotaluck, the runner-up to Kentucky Derby probable Stronghold in the Grade 3, $400,000 Sunland Park Derby, is getting about a month off, trainer Ty Garrett said Saturday. The horse last raced on April 7, and won the $125,000 Mine That Bird Derby by 2 1/2 lengths at Sunland.
“We turned him out yesterday,” Garrett said. “We’re going to give him like 30 days. We’ll let him tell us, then we’ll look for a spot.”
Lone Star Park’s stakes schedule gets underway opening night. The eight-race card starts with the $75,000 Bluebonnet, a 6 1/2-furlong sprint for fillies and mares bred in Texas.
The race has drawn one of the state’s top runners in Too Much Kiki, who won three straight sprint stakes during the Sam Houston Race Park meet before finishing second in the $100,000 Texas Thoroughbred Association Oaks in her two-turn debut March 23.
Presidential, Kupuna and Frosted Grace have each won a major stakes in the Southwest region in their last start and all could land at Lone Star Park this meet for the Grade 3, $400,000 Steve Sexton Mile.
The race is the centerpiece of a 41-date meet that opens Thursday night. The season will continue through July 14. The races again are unable to be simulcast to U.S. locales other than Texas racetracks due to an ongoing impasse between the Texas Racing Commission and the Horseracing Integrity and Safety Authority. Texas does not operate under the jurisdiction of HISA.
John W. Jacobs, a son of Hall of Fame trainer Hirsch Jacobs who won two Triple Crown races with horses bred in partnership by his father, died Wednesday at his home in Key Biscayne, Fla., surrounded by family members, according to his family. Jacobs, who had been suffering from a long illness, was 89.
Jacobs began working for his father in 1957, three years after Hirsch Jacobs had been elected to the Hall of Fame. In 1970, Hirsch Jacobs died in February, and the horses in the stable were transferred to John, including two top 3-year-olds, Personality and High Echelon.
George Weaver, a trainer based in New York, has been notified that a horse he trains, Anna’s Wish, tested positive for the banned drug metformin after finishing third in the Cicada Stakes on March 16 at Aqueduct, according to a notice posted on the website of the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit on Thursday.
Dornoch may be the actual 3-year-old brother to 2023 Kentucky Derby winner Mage. On paper, Just a Touch is Mage’s brother from another mother.
When Mage won last year’s Kentucky Derby, he did so in just his fourth career start, joining Justify (2018) and Big Brown (2008) as the only horses to do that since the filly Regret in 1915.
This year, Just a Touch, Catalytic, and Deterministic – in the unlikely event he starts – have made just three starts in front of Kentucky Derby 150. The Japanese-based horse T O Password will bring just two starts into the Kentucky Derby.
WHO’S HOT
Sierra Leone’s impressive 98 Beyer Speed Figure victory in the Grade 1 Blue Grass at Keeneland cemented his status as one of the top choices in the Kentucky Derby; Derby Watch linemaker David Aragona lowered Sierra Leone to 7-2, a tick below 3-1 favorite Fierceness.
Phil Schoenthal, a trainer based at Laurel Park in Maryland who races throughout the mid-Atlantic and Midwest, has been provisionally suspended by the Horseracing Integrity and Welfare Unit after two of his horses tested positive for methamphetamine, a banned substance that is in the process of being re-categorized under HIWU’s rules.
Schoenthal declined to comment on the details of the positives on Wednesday morning, but he said he was in the process of gathering information to defend himself.
A Kentucky Circuit Court judge in Jefferson County has scheduled a hearing for Monday to consider a request for a temporary injunction that would permit Amr Zedan to start his horse Muth in this year’s Kentucky Derby despite a ban placed by Churchill Downs on the colt’s trainer.
The judge, Mitch Perry, scheduled the hearing after a brief appearance by attorneys for Zedan and Churchill Downs Inc. in his courtroom on Monday morning.
