Aqueduct: Gotham among options for In Trouble's 2014 debut

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – In Trouble, whose 2-year-old season was cut short due to a chip in a knee, is working steadily toward his 3-year-old debut, which could come in the Grade 3, $500,000 Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct on March 2, trainer Tony Dutrow said.

“In a perfect world – and things are pretty close to perfect right now – I’m hoping for the Gotham,” Dutrow said from south Florida, where In Trouble is in training at the Palm Meadows training center.

[ROAD TO THE KENTUCKY DERBY: Prep races, point standings, replays]

In Trouble, a son of Tiz Wonderful, went 2 for 2 as a juvenile in 2013. He won his debut going 5 1/2 furlongs at Saratoga on Aug. 10 and then came back 50 days later to win the Grade 2 Futurity, at six furlongs, at Belmont Park by 2 1/4 lengths. Training toward a start in the Nashua at Aqueduct in early November, In Trouble was diagnosed with a knee chip that was surgically removed.

Along with the Gotham, Dutrow mentioned the Grade 3 Swale Stakes going seven furlongs at Gulfstream Park on March 1 and the Private Terms Stakes going 1 1/8 miles at Laurel on March 8 as possible starts for In Trouble’s return, but the Gotham seemed his first priority.

“I won’t make that decision until I see how things go in the next couple of workouts,” Dutrow said. “I feel very confident he’d get a mile and a sixteenth. I feel really, really good that that’s what he wants. Regardless of whether he won or not, he’d have five weeks to the Wood and that would be good for me.”

The $1 million Wood Memorial will be run at Aqueduct on April 5.

In Trouble has breezed four times at Palm Meadows since early January and has two or three more works before the Gotham.

“He’s very good,” Dutrow said. “He’s probably 70 percent ready to run. Two more workouts I feel that will have him ready.”

Financial Mogul eyes Gotham

Trainer Rick Violette’s top Kentucky Derby prospect, the undefeated Samraat, was flown by plane back to south Florida on Thursday. Meanwhile, his under-the-radar candidate, Financial Mogul, is spending time at the Fair Hill Training Center in Maryland to clear up a lung issue he had coming out of his sixth-place finish in the Holy Bull Stakes at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 25.

Financial Mogul, second behind Cairo Prince in the Nashua Stakes at Aqueduct last November, has visited the hyperbaric chamber at Fair Hill and is expected to have at least one workout at Fair Hill, where a Tapeta synthetic surface has allowed horses stabled there to have their training uninterrupted despite this wicked winter weather. If all goes well, Violette said Financial Mogul could make the Gotham at Aqueduct on March 1.

“We’ll probably breeze him there at least once before we send him to Aqueduct,” Violette said. “We’ll watch the weather. We might even leave him there. We’ll get by the first breeze and play it by ear.”

Samraat, who won the Withers Stakes at Aqueduct last Saturday to make him 4 for 4, will train at Palm Meadows for a few weeks before Violette and owner Len Riggio decide where he will run next.