Free Drop Billy tries to add to family's bankroll

Hawkbill posted a major payday last weekend, winning the Group 1, $6 million Dubai Sheema Classic at Meydan. Half-brother Free Drop Billy looks for another major score for the family – and to punch his ticket to the Kentucky Derby – in Saturday’s Grade 2, $1 million Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland.

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Free Drop Billy, by Union Rags, was bred in Kentucky by the Helen K. Groves Revokable Trust. The colt was a $200,000 purchase out of the Keeneland September yearling sale by the Albaugh Family Stables.

“He was a horse that was well-bred, a very well-balanced horse,” bloodstock adviser Steve Castagnola said. “He had a lovely way of moving.”

Free Drop Billy already owns a Grade 1 victory at Keeneland, having taken the Breeders’ Futurity last fall. Since then, he has finished ninth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, second in the Holy Bull to subsequent Florida Derby winner Audible, and third in the Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct.

“He’s training great,” trainer Dale Romans said. “He came back really well first time out. [The Gotham], he just got in trouble the whole way around. We still need some points, so we need him to come over here and run big. He likes this racetrack.”

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Free Drop Billy’s dam, Trensa, a Grade 3-placed Giant’s Causeway mare, has produced three winners from as many starters, led by Hawkbill, who won the Group 1 Coral-Eclipse in 2016 and has placed in four Grade 1/Group 1 races. The mare has a juvenile colt by Curlin, whom the Albaugh stable went to $800,000 to purchase following a bidding dispute at last year’s Keeneland September sale that resulted in the colt going through the ring twice.

Trensa delivered a More Than Ready colt in May 2017, and was bred back to Kitten’s Joy for a full sibling to Hawkbill due this year.