Aqueduct: Romansh comes again to beat Darley entrymate in Excelsior

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - When Long River came alongside Romansh in midstretch of Saturday’s Grade 3, $150,000 Excelsior Stakes at Aqueduct, Tom Albertrani, trainer of Romansh, said he would have been content to finish second.

After all, Romansh was coming off a last-place finish in last month’s Grade 1 Donn Handicap, so a narrow loss in his first start since then would have been a marked improvement.

But Romansh wasn’t content to finish second and after being headed by Long River, he came back on his entrymate to win the Excelsior by a neck. Long River finished second by 4 1/4 lengths over Percussion. Dawly, Praetereo, and Don Dulce completed the order of finish. Mr Palmer scratched.

“I was pretty much happy to be second, really,” Albertrani said. “I said ‘he’s run a good race, he’s going to get beat by his entrymate.’ I was kind of happy. When I saw him come back on again that made it even sweeter. We’re very proud of the way he ran today and we know we got a horse for later on.”

The win was the fourth from nine career starts for Romansh, a 4-year-old son of Bernardini. He ended his 3-year-old season with a 9 1/4-length victory in the Grade 3 Discovery.

The loss ended a three-race winning streak for Long River, trained by Kiaran McLaughlin. Both horses are owned by Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin Racing and the entry was sent off as the 1-5 favorite.

Romansh, under Jose Ortiz, stalked the pacesetting Percussion through six furlongs in 1:12.07 before taking a short lead approaching the quarter pole. Long River, under Irad Ortiz Jr., sat third then came to Romansh in mid-stretch and looked like he was going to go by before Romansh repelled him.

Romansh covered the 1 1/8 miles in 1:49.07 and returned $2.50 as part of the favored entry. Bettors wagered $547,669 to show on the entry out of $584,326 in the pool and the entry paid $2.10 to show.

Jose Ortiz said it wasn’t extra special to beat his brother on the wire in a stakes race.

“He’s another jockey,” Jose Ortiz. “It’s special that I won the Excelsior.”

Said Irad: “It’s exciting he won. It’s good when you win a stakes, so congratulations to him. One day he beat me, one day I beat him. No problem.”

Jimmy Bell, representing Sheikh Mohammed’s U.S.-based operation, said he was happy the way things turned out.

“We’ve really liked both these colts and they both have continued [moving forward],” Bell said. “We really needed to find out which Romansh we had today. . . . Now we can really draw a line through [the Donn]. We wanted to see what we had to make some plans as we go forward now we have some options some opportunities. We’d like to think there’s some real quality to both of them.”