Eurton's 3-year-olds looking for summer paydays

Midway through the year, the 3-year-old season is beginning in earnest for trainer Peter Eurton.

Last weekend, Core Beliefs won the Grade 3 Ohio Derby for the stable. On July 6, Cool Bobby, unraced since beating maidens at Del Mar last November, is scheduled to start in the Iowa Derby at Prairie Meadows. The $250,000 Iowa Derby is run at 1 1/16 miles. Mario Gutierrez is booked to ride.

Later this summer, Dark Vader and Draft Pick will start in other lucrative stakes for Eurton. One could run in the Grade 3 Los Alamitos Derby on July 14, Eurton said. Another may start in the Grade 3 Indiana Derby, a $500,000 race at 1 1/16 miles at Indiana Grand the same day.

Eurton’s stable is loaded with talented 3-year-olds, and the stakes schedule of the entire nation provides opportunities to keep them apart.

“The whole year has so much to offer,” Eurton said.

Core Beliefs, owned by Gary Broad, was third behind Triple Crown hero Justify in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby in April and second to Blended Citizen in the Grade 2 Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont Park on May 12. Core Beliefs closed from eighth in a field of 11 to win the Ohio Derby by a nose.

The Grade 2 Jim Dandy Stakes at Saratoga on July 28, the Grade 1 Haskell Invitational at Monmouth Park on July 29, and the Grade 3 West Virginia Derby at Mountaineer Park on Aug. 4 are options for Core Beliefs’s next start.

“I want to see how he comes back,” Eurton said. “I’d like to give him five to six weeks between starts. Anything is possible.”

Dark Vader was third by a neck in the Easy Goer Stakes at Belmont Park on June 9. Draft Pick won the Grade 3 Affirmed Stakes at 1 1/16 miles at Santa Anita on June 10 in his stakes debut.

“I would prefer to have Draft Pick in Indiana,” Eurton said. “He hasn’t traveled a lot. Dark Vader has been on the plane three times.”

Aside from the trip to New York, Dark Vader was sent to Ohio last October and to Sunland Park in New Mexico in March.