Baker loaded for Kennedy Road

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Trainer Reade Baker will have a big shot to win Sunday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Kennedy Road Stakes at Woodbine for the second year in a row, as he will start all four horses he has nominated to the race: Jose Sea View, Go Blue Or Go Home, Sharp Sensation, and last year’s Kennedy Road winner, Bear No Joke.

The Kennedy Road will go a long way in deciding the Canadian champion male sprinter. Sharp Sensation has won stakes races on dirt, turf, and synthetic this season, and a victory in the Kennedy Road would give him four stakes wins on the year, including two in graded stakes.
Sharp Sensation will enter the Kennedy Road Stakes off of a win in the Bet On Sunshine Stakes on the dirt at Churchill Downs on Nov. 1.

Baker said removing blinkers was a big factor in Sharp Sensation’s performance in the Bet On Sunshine, which was his first race on dirt.

Baker said he had wanted to take the blinkers off Sharp Sensation since he ran seventh in the Grade 2 Play the King Stakes on turf at Woodbine on Aug. 10, but with his next two races coming at five furlongs and 5 1/2 furlongs – in the Grade 3 Turf Monster Handicap at Parx and the Grade 3 Woodford at Keeneland – Baker felt an equipment change at the short distances would be counterproductive.

“Once I had my chance going down [to Churchill Downs], I took them off, and he was perfect,” Baker said.

Baker said that regardless of the result in the Kennedy Road Stakes, Sharp Sensation would get the winter off at Margaux Farms near Lexington, Ky., and would likely make his 2015 seasonal debut at Keeneland.