Eye Witness holds on to take the Paradise Creek
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Eye Witness won his third consecutive race on Saturday, when he held off closing favorite Inflation Nation by a head in the $150,000 Paradise Creek at Belmont Park. It was another five and a half lengths back in third to Vacation Dance.
The Paradise Creek was a seven furlong turf race for 3-year-olds.
Eye Witness ($7.70) entered off a pair of wins over the synthetic track at Turfway Park, accounting for a maiden special weight in his second start in January and the $180,000 Animal Kingdom in March.
In the Paradise Creek, he was content to stalk the leaders as Charging set a pressured pace, leading the field through an opening quarter in 21.76 seconds and a half-mile in 45.03. Eye Witness moved to the fore from there and went on to cover the distance on yielding ground in 1:25.32.
Jose Ortiz was aboard the winner for trainer Wesley Ward.
“I didn’t want to take the momentum away from him and I felt like I probably moved a little sooner than I wanted to,” Ortiz told the publicity department for the New York Racing Association. “But with the soft ground, sometimes if you stop the momentum, it’s very hard to get it back. I almost paid the price in the end, but I’m just glad we held on.”
Eye Witness is a son of City of Light who brought $650,000 at the Keeneland September yearling auction in 2021. He races for the partnership of Westerberg, Mrs. John Magnier, Jonathan Poulin, Derrick Smith and Michael Tabor.
“Those City of Lights are just beautiful horses,” said Ward.
Eye Witness has made one other start on turf, finishing third by a head in a maiden special weight over six furlongs at the Belmont meet at Aqueduct in his career debut Sept. 23.
“I didn’t see enough on the dirt to warrant putting him on there,” Ward said of debuting on turf. “We put him on the grass and he ran a good race. He's not the same horse then as he is now.”
Ward said Eye Witness was given some time after his debut because he is a large colt and with that time the horse “started to come around,” he said. Ward was impressed with the maiden win from Eye Witness, and the colt has backed it up with consecutive stakes wins, first in the Animal Kingdom and now the Paradise Creek.
Eye Witness has won three of four starts for earnings of $205,740.
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