Close Hatches taking it easy
ELMONT, N.Y. – Close Hatches, the leading female horse in training, has not breezed since her victory over Princess of Sylmar and Beholder in the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps here on Belmont Stakes Day. That has been by design, said trainer Bill Mott.
In assessing the short-term stakes options for Close Hatches, Mott saw nothing that appealed to him until the Grade 1, $500,000 Personal Ensign at Saratoga on Aug. 22. Next weekend’s Delaware Handicap is run at 1 1/4 miles, a distance Mott does not want to run Close Hatches. Races like the Shuvee Handicap at Saratoga on July 27 or the Molly Pitcher at Monmouth also didn’t interest Mott.
Mott said “in an ideal world,” the Personal Ensign and the Grade 1 Spinster – an early-October race now on dirt at Keeneland and sponsored by Close Hatches’s owner, Juddmonte Farms – would be the preludes to the Breeders’ Cup Distaff at Santa Anita.
Mott said Close Hatches has been training every day but had not breezed because “I didn’t want to put her on a work schedule 2 1/2 months before the race.”
Last summer, Close Hatches was off from June 22 to Sept. 21 and came off the bench to win the Grade 1, $1 million Cotillion at Parx before finishing second to Beholder in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff.
“Last summer, we had to stop on her because she was sick,” Mott said. “This is elective. She’s doing very well. She could probably run wherever you wanted to run her.”
Meanwhile, Mott had mixed news on two of his top older males. Lea, the winner of the Grade 1 Donn Handicap, will not make the Grade 1 Whitney on Aug. 2. Lea, who got sick in the spring and was forced to miss races like the Charles Town Classic and Metropolitan Handicap, had breezed twice in mid-June but has not breezed since.
“Maybe we’ll see him back for the Woodward,” Mott said, referring to a Grade 1 race Aug. 29 at Saratoga.
Cigar Street, who has not raced since winning the Grade 3 Skip Away Stakes at Gulfstream in March 2013, returned to the work tab Tuesday, breezing three furlongs in 37.33 seconds at Saratoga.
“He looks great,” said Mott, who said he did not have anything planned for the 5-year-old son of Street Sense.
Mott also mentioned that his promising sprinter Mean Season, who was vanned off after winning an allowance race at Aqueduct in March, has been walking under tack at the Fair Hill training center in Maryland.