Decent payout assured in wide-open Pat Day Mile
RACE REPLAY IS NOT AVAILABLE
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The first thing a bettor should know about the Pat Day Mile on Saturday is this: The morning-line favorite is 4-1.
And honestly, that might not even be high enough. There is no semblance of a clear-cut favorite among a field of 13 3-year-olds in this 93rd running of the Grade 3, $250,000 Pat Day Mile, which begins a pick-five sequence (races 8-12) that ends with the Kentucky Derby.
An abundance of speed in the one-turn-mile race makes for some extremely interesting handicapping, with Local Hero, Uncontested, Bobby On Fleek, and maybe a few more flying early.
“It looks like there is a lot of pace in the race,” said Arnaud Delacour, who trains No Dozing, a candidate to pick up the fallen pieces down the long Churchill Downs stretch. “Hopefully, that will help my horse settle.”
Wild Shot, one of several starters in this race whose connections harbored Derby aspirations for much of the prep season, is the lukewarm 4-1 choice on the program. Trained by Rusty Arnold, the colt led early in the Blue Grass Stakes before fading to finish last, thereby ending the Derby dream, but Wild Shot is more likely to assume a stalking spot here when turning back from that 1 1/8-mile race.
Local Hero, said trainer Steve Asmussen, “has trained forwardly” since finishing third behind Girvin as the Louisiana Derby pacesetter. The colt will be ridden by Florent Geroux when breaking from the tricky No. 1 hole for the long run down the Churchill backstretch.
“We could’ve entered the Derby as an also-eligible, but this seemed the more prudent way to go,” said Asmussen.
No Dozing endured a tough trip in the 1 1/16-mile Lexington, with jockey Joel Rosario being forced to check or wait on several occasions. The colt nonetheless persisted to finish third in a tight three-horse finish.
Several other possibilities in one of the best betting events on the Derby card are Excitations, an allowance winner last out who has been favored in all four career starts for the Fair Grounds Racing Club; Sonic Mule, trying to rebound from a subpar effort in the Tampa Bay Derby for the powerhouse Todd Pletcher stable; the uncoupled Chad Brown duo of You’re to Blame and Bobby On Fleek; and Warrior’s Club, who draws favorably in the outside post for Flavien Prat and the Churchill Downs Racing Club.
The balance of the lineup is Bitumen, Rapid Dial, Greeley and Ben, and Colonelsdarktemper.
This is actually the third running of the Pat Day Mile, which had been known as the Derby Trial before Churchill racing officials switched things up two years ago. Post time is set for 2:45 p.m. Eastern.