Dante Stakes is fork in the road for Too Darn Hot

The Group 2 Dante Stakes on Thursday at York Racecourse in England serves as a prep for the Epsom Derby. For Too Darn Hot, the favorite, the race serves as a crossroads.

A strong showing in his 3-year-old debut could send Too Darn Hot on to the Derby, but if the John Gosden-trained colt fails to comfortably see out the Dante’s one mile, two furlongs, and 56 yards – more than a quarter-mile farther than he’s yet run – his summer campaign could be focused on races at or about one mile.

Too Darn Hot, an Andrew Lloyd-Weber homebred by Dubawi and out of Dar Re Mi, won all four of his starts at age 2 and won them easily. He capped his campaign with a decisive victory in the Group 1 Dewhurst and was crowned European 2-year-old champion at the Cartier Awards.

Things have since gone less well. Too Darn Hot was supposed to start his 2019 season in the Greenham Stakes and bound from there to the 2000 Guineas over a straight mile at Newmarket, after which a run at the Derby would be entertained. Instead, Too Darn Hot sustained a splint-bone injury the week before the Greenham, forcing Gosden to make another plan – namely, this one.

Too Darn Hot’s precocity and talent aren’t in question, and his pedigree suggests he should get the Dante trip, but whether he can do so while making his first start in seven months with an interrupted preparation – and whether he should be trusted to do so at a short price – is a different question.

Dante alternatives abound. Line of Duty will be the most familiar to an American audience as he races for the first time since winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Churchill Downs. Godolphin and trainer Charlie Appleby have the Derby as an objective, which is not to say Line of Duty won’t race effectively in his prep for Epsom.

Japan is the second choice in ante-post betting despite trainer Aidan O’Brien’s stating that Japan had a physical issue a few weeks ago that cost him a week’s preparation for his 3-year-old debut. Telecaster and Surfman also have come in for considerable support with British bookmakers.

The Dante is scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern, and a half-hour before it, Too Darn Hot’s full sister Lah Ti Dar makes her 4-year-old debut in the Group 2 Middleton Stakes. Lah Ti Dar is the heavy favorite in the Middleton, run over the same distance of about 1 1/4 miles as the Dante, despite making her first start of the season and racing at a distance short of her best. She ended her 2018 campaign by finishing second to Kew Gardens while facing males in the St. Leger Stakes and third behind Magical and Coronet in the Group 1 QIPCO British Champions Fillies and Mares Stakes over a soft course at Ascot.

Friday’s featured race at York, the Group 2 Yorkshire Cup, also has Gosden at the controls as he sends out the excellent stayer Stradivarius for his first start of the season. The 5-year-old Stradivarius won the 2018 Yorkshire Cup, contested at about 1 3/4 miles, by three lengths, the start of a perfect five-race campaign during which he won all the best long-distance flat races in England, including the Group 1 Gold Cup at Royal Ascot and the Group 1 Goodwood Cup.

Enable to Royal Ascot

The connections of the great Enable announced Wednesday that the mare will make her first start of 2019 at Royal Ascot in June rather than in the Coronation Cup on May 31 at Epsom. Enable is expected to start in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes but has the Hardwicke Stakes as an alternative landing spot.

Enable ended her 2018 season with exciting wins over Sea of Class in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and over Magical in the Breeders’ Cup Turf and is back in training this year for Gosden and owner-breeder Khalid Abdullah in great part to try to become the first three-time Arc winner.

If, as is likely, Enable races in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, she will probably be matched again with Sea of Class, who is being pointed to that race by trainer William Haggas.