Chance It scratches from Fountain of Youth due to post position
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. scratched his top 3-year-old prospect Chance It from Saturday’s Grade 2 Fountain of Youth, citing the poor post position as the reason for bypassing the important Kentucky Derby prep with a horse who was among the leading contenders in the 1 1/16-mile fixture. Chance It will now run next Saturday in the Tampa Bay Derby.
Chance It, game winner of the one-mile Mucho Macho Man in his 3-year-old debut here Jan. 4, drew the extreme outside post in the 12-horse field, a decided disadvantage due to the short run to the first turn in races run at 1 1/16 miles over the main track at Gulfstream Park. Makabim was the lone scratch on the morning of the race, leaving Chance It to break from post 11, a starting position that has yielded only four winners from 54 starters (7 percent) over the past 10 years.
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“It was a tough decision,” Joseph said. “My initial reaction after the draw was to scratch, but I’ve learned not to be rash, so we thought it over as long as we could and things didn’t unfold the last few days like we would have liked. So we stuck to our plan. All the owners were on board. If there had been enough scratches to get us into post 9, we would have run 100 percent. And probably 85 percent if we’d gotten even one more scratch and broke from post 10. But looking over the stats, post 11 is actually worse than post 12 in the percentage of horses who have won here at a mile and one-sixteenth.”
Joseph said all he wanted to do was to give his horse his best chance to win the race.
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“We just wanted to give him a fair opportunity,” Joseph said. “He’s the kind of horse who always runs his hardest, and he might just have been good enough to overcome the post. But it wouldn’t have been doing him justice. I don’t think I could have looked him in the eye afterwards and felt like we have done the right thing (by making him run from post 11). Believe me, we really wanted to run here. We really never had any back-up plan. This was the only race we’d pointed for until this happened.”
Joseph will have to find a new jockey for Chance It in the Tampa Bay Derby, with Tyler Gaffalione already committed to ride at Santa Anita next Saturday.
“I’ve talked to a couple of riders about the race, but we have not made any decision yet,” Joseph said. “He’ll mostly likely breeze here Monday and ship to Tampa on Friday. It looks like it is going to be a small field for the [Tampa Bay Derby], although that’s what we’d thought here, too. The difference is even if they get 12, because it’s a mile track and there’s such a long run to the first turn, he’d have plenty of time to get over should he draw poorly again.”