Count Again sidelined for rest of year

Count Again, the winner of the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile at Santa Anita in May, has been taken out of training and will miss the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Keeneland on Nov. 5.

Trainer Phil D’Amato said on Wednesday that he was unsatisfied with the way Count Again has trained in the last month. The 7-year-old gelding will be rested for a 2023 campaign.

“We’re going to back off on him,” D’Amato said.

D’Amato said Count Again did not have a specific injury, but cited “a bunch of little that things that always culminate at the same time.”

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“He’s up there in age and he runs so hard,” D’Amato said. “When he’s tired and not 100 percent, he tells you that in his training. He told me that.”

D’Amato said Count Again’s 2023 campaign could start later than it did this year in an effort to have the gelding in peak form for the BC Mile at Santa Anita.

“That’s a race we would all love to win,” he said. “He’s talented enough to win that sort of race.”

This year, Count Again had four starts from early February to late May, winning three times.

Owned by Agave Racing and Sam-Son Farm, Count Again earned a fees-paid berth for the BC Mile with a sharp win by 2 1/2 lengths in the Shoemaker Mile, his second Grade 1 win of the year. Count Again won the Grade 1 Frank Kilroe Mile at Santa Anita in March.

Count Again has won 7 of 17 starts and earned $1,069,915.

Count Again was under consideration for the Grade 2 Del Mar Mile on Sept. 3 before D’Amato opted not to enter. D’Amato won the race with Hong Kong Harry, who is not running in the BC Mile, D’Amato said. A two-time graded stakes winner this year, Hong Kong Harry is expected to start in the Grade 2 City of Hop