Haskell: Dornoch should leave running from post 1 under Saez

For the second time during his career, Dornoch will start a race from post 1, the gate the 3-year-old colt drew Wednesday when entries were taken for Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Haskell Invitational Stakes at Monmouth Park.

“The last time he had the one hole, he got beat – but that was the Derby,” said trainer Danny Gargan.

Dornoch never got a clean run in the Kentucky Derby, finishing 10th, beaten 18 lengths. But the last time he raced, on June 8 at Saratoga, Dornoch won the Belmont Stakes. The colt, Gargan said, comes into the 1 1/8-mile Haskell in physical condition perhaps even superior to that which he carried into the Belmont.

“They’ve got a long run down the front side into the turn. We should be okay. I just don’t want to get stuck down inside checking,” Gargan said.

Luis Saez, aboard Dornoch in seven of his eight starts, has the mount Saturday. Dornoch has a familiar key rival in Mindframe, who took the Belmont Stakes lead away from Dornoch at the three-sixteenths pole before ducking out from a left-handed crop and losing momentum as Dornoch came back along the fence to win by a half-length.

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Mindframe, the mount of Irad Ortiz Jr., got a good post, 7, for what will be just the fourth start of his career. Mindframe cruised to wins in a Gulfstream Park maiden sprint and a Churchill Downs route allowance before his tough Belmont loss.

He’s one of three entrants trained by Todd Pletcher along with Fierceness and Tuscan Sky. Fierceness will be scratched from the Haskell to run in the Jim Dandy at Saratoga as long as Mindframe is good to go at Monmouth, which means Mindframe moves into post 6. Tuscan Sky, sharp winner of the Pegasus Stakes at Monmouth last out, drew post 3 with Javier Castellano named to ride.

Next to him in post 4 is the Haskell’s other key player, Timberlake, who looked like a prime Kentucky Derby contender after winning the Rebel Stakes in his 2023 debut. But Timberlake misfired in the Arkansas Derby, finishing a well-beaten fourth as the 11-10 favorite, and he races Saturday for the first time since that March 30 disappointment.

Sea Streak, winner of the Long Branch this meet but a flat fifth last out in the Pegasus, drew post 8, while the other two in the Haskell, Jasper’s Pride and Just Step On It, were supplemented into a race in which they’ll be overmatched.

The Haskell is one of six Saturday stakes at Monmouth, where champion older mare Idiomatic is expected to contest the Molly Pitcher. The weather forecast calls for sunshine and a high temperature of 87 degrees.

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