Network Effect, the runner-up in two graded stakes as a juvenile and a member of Daily Racing Form’s first installment of Derby Watch, has been taken off the Triple Crown trail due to “a minor setback,” trainer Chad Brown said Sunday.
War of Will’s decisive victory in Saturday’s Risen Star Stakes at Fair Grounds was a good example of how hot takes immediately after a race might not age very well.
Two stakes at Tokyo Racecourse in Japan on Sunday – the Grade 1 February Stakes for older horses and the Hyacinth Stakes for 3-year-olds – could produce runners for two of the biggest races in the United States later this year.
From an historical perspective, it is appropriate that Saturday's $100,000 El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields awards its winner a berth in the Preakness Stakes. Trainer Bob Baffert wouldn't mind if Kingly earned that berth, although that is far from the main reason he entered the colt in the 1 1/8-mile El Camino Real Derby.
Twice in the last four years, and five times since 1996, Bob Baffert has trained the winner of the Kentucky Derby. He has done it with horses who were brilliant at 2 and trained on like Silver Charm, a wiry colt who needed plenty of racing to find his best form in Real Quiet, a late acquisition like War Emblem, a champion at 2 who repeated at 3 in American Pharoah, and, in Justify last year, a horse who at this point in the calendar hadn't even started.
Kentucky Derby pedigree analysis: Game Winner
Bob Baffert, a five-time winner of the Kentucky Derby and two-time winner of the Triple Crown, trains three of the runners in the inaugural top 20, including the top two choices, Game Winner and Improbable.
Road to the 2019 Kentucky Derby: Sam F. Davis analysis
The mutuel field, the 24th or “all others” option, closed as the favorite over Game Winner after three days of betting into Pool 2 of the 2019 Kentucky Derby Future Wager. The pool opened Friday at noon Eastern and ran through 6 p.m. Sunday.
Hidden Scroll, a runaway winner of his debut on Jan. 26 at Gulfstream Park, and Code of Honor, runner-up in last year's Champagne Stakes, are among the 3-year-olds pointing for the Grade 2, $350,000 Fountain of Youth Stakes on March 2 at Gulfstream.
