Cox has another classy older router in Dragoon Guard
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Just when you thought Brad Cox’s stable could not possibly have another graded stakes-class older dirt-route horse, here comes another one.
Dragoon Guard, unraced since finishing third Sept. 21 in the Grade 1 Pennsylvania Derby, makes his 4-year-old debut in the first race Thursday at Churchill Downs. Six more older horses were entered in the lidlifter on a twilight card that starts at 5:00 p.m. Eastern.
The race, a one-turn mile, has a basic third-level allowance condition but is also open to $100,00 claimers and horses who haven’t won an open stakes or open allowance at one mile or farther since Aug. 22. Dragoon Guard, a four-time winner whose last victory came Aug. 4 in the West Virginia Derby, qualifies under the latter allowance condition.
“He’s a two-turn horse, but he’s won twice around one turn, and this is a good spot to get him started,” said Cox.
Dragoon Guard won’t run in the Blame Stakes on May 31 at Churchill, a prep for the Stephen Foster Stakes, but he was one of 10 older males Cox nominated to that Grade 3 dirt route.
“Some of them are going to have to run against each other at some point,” Cox said.
Dragoon Guard, a Juddmonte homebred by Arrogate out of Filimbi, started once at age 2, finishing second by a neck in a September 2023 Churchill maiden sprint. He returned the following April with a sharp Keeneland maiden win before scoring open-lengths victories in a one-turn mile Churchill allowance, the 1 1/16-mile Indiana Derby, and the 1 1/8-mile West Virginia Derby. Dragoon Guard breezed twice in October following his Pennsylvania Derby run, which wasn’t especially impressive, before going out of training and into a winter break.
“He came out of the Pennsylvania Derby, he had cut himself, got stepped on. We got him back in training, he was a little on the flat side, so we kicked him out and gave him a break,” Cox said.
Cox, who thinks it’s realistic for Dragoon Guard to get to the Grade 1 level, said the colt has breezed better this spring than he did as a 3-year-old, and he’s worked so willingly that Cox hasn’t felt the need to put Dragoon Guard in company. In one of his quintet of five-furlong drills, Cox timed Dragoon Guard galloping out in 1:11 and change.
Listed as the 2-1 morning-line favorite with Florent Geroux named to ride, Dragoon Guard might wind up closer to even money when betting closes. Tumbarumba will take some action, especially partnered with Luis Saez, who won four races from eight mounts Sunday. Tumbarumba brings an eight-race losing streak to the Thursday feature but is far more capable than his distant seventh-place finish at Aqueduct on May 4 in the Westchester Stakes. Tumbarumba has a 0-1-0 record from three wet-track starts and the Westchester was run over a sloppy surface.
Jose Ortiz, who came into the race week leading the Churchill jockey standings with 23 wins to Saez’s 21, has the mount on rail-drawn Classic Car Wash. Will Take It hit a 98 Beyer Speed Figure last out, but he did so in a race over 1 1/8 miles around two turns at Keeneland. In a one-turn mile about 11 months ago at Churchill, Dragoon Guard beat him by seven lengths.
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