The mutuel field, the 24th or “all others” option, closed as a lukewarm favorite after three days of betting into Pool 3 of the 2021 Kentucky Derby Future Wager.
2021 Road to the Derby: El Camino Real Derby analysis
Road to the 2021 Kentucky Derby: Risen Star Stakes analysis
Prevalence, one of the more exciting prospects for the May 1 Kentucky Derby, was out for serious work again early Friday, going five furlongs in 1:01 over a fast track at the Palm Meadows training center.
Derby fever will come to a boil Saturday at Golden Gate Fields when the 40th El Camino Real Derby is run with a field of nine. The $100,000 El Camino Real Derby, run at 1 1/8 miles over the Tapeta main track, offers 10 Kentucky Derby qualifying points and a berth in the Preakness to the winner.
The horses that raced first, second, and third into the first turn of the Lecomte last month were first, second, and third at the finish. Those three – Midnight Bourbon, Proxy, and Mandaloun – are back for another round of 3-year-old dirt-route stakes racing Saturday in the Grade 2, $400,000 Risen Star.
He'll be trainer Todd Fincher's first Fair Grounds runner when he starts Saturday in the Grade 2, $400,000 Risen Star Stakes, and there are real hopes Senor Buscador can take Fincher and owner Joe Peacock Jr. to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby.
Keepmeinmind, the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes winner who had been entered in the Risen Star on Saturday at Fair Grounds, will remain home and run in the Grade 3, $750,000 Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn.
Brad Cox has won the Kentucky Oaks twice in the last three years, and last year earned his first Eclipse Award as champion trainer, culminating a year in which he won four Breeders' Cup races and had two champions. He's yet to run a horse in the Derby. But 2 1/2 months out from this year's Derby on May 1 at Churchill Downs, he's in as good a position as any trainer, with champion Essential Quality, stakes winner Caddo River, and the promising Mandaloun.
Tapit, among the most successful sires in modern classic history, has three individuals in the first Derby Watch Top 20 list. That trio is led by Godolphin's homebred Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner and Eclipse Award champion Essential Quality, already a multiple Grade 1 winner around two turns.
