Fountain of Youth is In Due Time's moment of truth

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The most recent prep for the Kentucky Derby yielded a 75-1 winner when Un Ojo won the Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park last Saturday.

A similar result Saturday in the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park would be far-fetched, but with an expected full gate of 12, there will be some real longshots in the field, if only by mathematical necessity.

One of the longer-priced starters figures to be In Due Time, trained by Kelly Breen. The chestnut Not This Time colt will be making his stakes debut after earning a 92 Beyer Speed Figure in a Feb. 4 allowance victory going a one-turn mile at Gulfstream.

Based at the Palm Meadows training center about an hour north of Gulfstream, Breen also had been considering the Tampa Bay Derby on March 12 as the first Derby prep for In Due Time. “But I thought ‘Let’s take the high road and find the toughest race with the toughest horses so we can see what we’ve got,’ ” Breen said.

A winner in 2 of 3 starts, In Due Time will be making his first start around two turns in the 1 1/16-mile Fountain of Youth. Paco Lopez will be aboard again.

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“The horse really couldn’t be training much better,” Breen said. “He came out of the last race bouncing off the walls. He’s given us every indication that he’s ready.”

In Due Time is owned by Edge Racing, a spinoff of the popular MyRacehorse business except with dozens of partners instead of hundreds or even thousands. The Feb. 4 triumph came versus a pair of highly regarded Todd Pletcher prospects, American Icon and Iron Works, and the colt has shown enough promise to be included every week thus far in Daily Racing Form’s Derby Watch Top 20.

Breen has run three horses in the Kentucky Derby. West Side Bernie and Atomic Rain were ninth and 16th in 2009, and Pants On Fire was ninth in 2011. A fourth starter, Black Onyx, was scratched off the program in 2013.

So, it’s been a while since Breen, a 52-year-old New Jersey native, has reveled in the Derby experience. He is not yet plotting out details of a return to Louisville, but with qualifying points on a 50-20-10-5 scale on the line Saturday, he can be as optimistic as he cares to be. After all, stranger things have happened, as evidenced most recently by the Rebel result.

“It’s nice to have a nice horse like this,” he said.

Entries for the Grade 2, $400,000 Fountain of Youth and eight other Saturday stakes, seven graded, were to be released late Monday afternoon. Among the likely favorites are Simplification and Mo Donegal, the respective two-three finishers in the Feb. 5 Holy Bull, along with Emmanuel and Rattle N Roll.

The Saturday card will mark the introduction of two new wagers, the Coast to Coast Dirt Pick 5 and the Coast to Coast Turf Pick 5, both comprising stakes from Gulfstream and Santa Anita. CNBC will host a two-hour live broadcast (4-6 p.m. Eastern).