Only five potential Kentucky Derby starters galloped here at Churchill Downs on a bleary Sunday morning which featured intermittent showers and a racetrack downgraded from fast to sloppy following the renovation break.
HOME RUN KITTEN (#2, ML 5-2) returns to what may be his best game – sprinting on this hillside course. Oh, he can route just fine as proven by those last 3 sharp efforts at a mile (2nd in a Grade 2, 3rd in a Grade 2, 3rd in a Grade 1) but he’s 2 for 3 on this hillside course and should get the right kind of hot pace to bolster his last run.
The multiple Grade 3 stakes-winning El Kabeir demonstrated his fitness and energy levels were very strong during a five-furlong work timed in 1:00.15 Sunday morning over Belmont Park’s main track.
Shared Belief, pulled up by jockey Mike Smith in the early stages of Saturday’s Grade 2 Charles Town Classic, may have an issue in his right hind end but otherwise appeared sound, trainer Jerry Hollendorfer said Sunday morning.
As of this writing, the scheduled turf races at Keeneland remain on the grass despite steady rain this morning in Lexington. So bear in mind, my “How I’d play today” thoughts, being made late a.m. Sunday, are with the expectation those races will be run on a yielding grass course.
Quiet Hour takes on a field of seven in Sunday's sixth race at Gulfstream Park, the one-mile Sand Dollar Stakes. Since Jan. 1, 2014, trainer Martin Wolfson is winning at a 31 percent clip when saddling a horse switching from sprint to route, for a return on investment of $4.73.
Arties Party Girl (#6, ML 5-1) will return to action in Sunday's third race at Aqueduct, a 6 1/2-furlong maiden claimer. It will be her first start since a third-place finish by three lengths in a six-furlong race March 8 at Aqueduct. The first- and second-place finishers from that maiden claimer came back to win their next starts.
Jockey Pablo Flores sustained a small fracture in the tip of his left thumb when unseated by Monsajem Accrete prior to the first race Saturday at Golden Gate Fields.
P H Supercam will look to repeat in the George Morton Levy Series Final.
Despite racing wide on both turns of the $150,000 Sugar Maple Stakes, Taketheodds dug in through the stretch under jockey Mike Smith and was up by a neck to deny Flattering Bea a repeat victory in the seven-furlong race for fillies and mares.
