Kentucky Derby winner Rich Strike gets back to work for Belmont Stakes
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Rich Strike was sent through his first breeze since his monumental upset of the Kentucky Derby when going a purposeful half-mile in 47.20 seconds Saturday morning over a fast Churchill Downs surface.
Owner Rick Dawson was in from Oklahoma to watch the work alongside trainer Eric Reed and jockey Sonny Leon from Section 321 in the Churchill grandstand. Rich Strike was ridden by Gabriel Lagunes in the solo drill when breaking off well before the half-mile pole over a fast track.
Churchill clocker John Nichols got the Keen Ice colt in an opening split of 22.80 seconds, with a five-furlong gallop-out time of 1:00.60 through the far turn. The colt continued along at a steady pace for a good quarter-mile or so, with Lagunes finally pulling him up where the work officially began around the half-mile pole.
“I’m glad to get this out of the way,” Reed said when back at the stakes barn some 20 minutes later. Watching Rich Strike get a bath after cooling out a few rounds: “He is just so fit. If you put a match up to his nose, he wouldn’t blow it out. Literally. He’s something I’ve never seen before.”
Dawson and Reed both reiterated their belief that skipping the Preakness was the right move.
“I really don’t think his head would’ve been in it,” said Reed. “We’re very satisfied with our decision to wait for the Belmont” Stakes on June 11.
Rich Strike, ridden by Leon, won the May 7 Derby at 80-1, the second-longest odds in the 148-year history of the Run for the Roses, behind only Donerail (91-1 in 1913). He is the fifth Derby winner to be withheld from the Preakness since Gato del Sol in 1982, but the first without the various extenuating circumstances that led Spend a Buck (1985), Grindstone (1996), Country House (2019), and Mandaloun (2021) to skip it.
Rich Strike arrived here Wednesday from Reed’s home base at the Mercury training center on the outskirts of Lexington after being stabled there following the Derby. Following this workout, Reed initially had planned to ship the colt this Thursday to New York, arriving more than two weeks early for the Belmont, “but after thinking it over, we’re going to keep him right here and work him one more time” on May 30, he said.
“He just really likes it here at Churchill,” Reed added. “It picks his head up big-time. He’ll have the work on May 30, and then we’ll ship him up to Belmont and he’ll have eight or nine days galloping over the track there.”
Leon, based primarily in Ohio, has never ridden at Belmont, but Reed said he is “working with a couple of agents” to get the jockey a few mounts during Belmont week so that Leon can familiarize himself with “Big Sandy.”
Rich Strike, claimed by Dawson’s RED-TR Racing for $30,000 here last September, has won twice in eight starts. Reed said racing office staff from Belterra Park – where he frequently runs horses – jokingly called him this week to inform him that “they’ve got a never-won-three allowance going a mile and an eighth we could use as a prep for the Belmont if we needed,” he laughed, “but we’d have to run against older horses.”