Santa Anita and Gulfstream will offer good races around their 3-year-old events with Kentucky Derby implications. But for all the talent assembled, including deep fields in the venerable San Marcos and San Pasqual out West, there is only one bona fide champion suiting up for Saturday's action. His name is Roy H.
Led by the likes of Eclipse Award winner Good Magic, fellow Eclipse finalists Bolt d’Oro and Solomini, and the unbeaten McKinzie, a total of 360 3-year-olds were announced on Thursday as early nominees to this year’s Triple Crown.
For nearly two years from late 2014 through the summer of 2016, trainer Keith Desormeaux enjoyed the finest stretch of his career, winning four Grade 1, seven-figure races.
The unbeaten 3-year-old colt Mask, considered a top prospect for the Kentucky Derby, has had a setback “that will require him to miss approximately two weeks of training,” trainer Chad Brown said Tuesday.
Bolt d’Oro, the losing favorite in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, and Good Magic, the winner of that race, have been assigned highweight of 126 pounds in the The Jockey Club’s Annual Top 2-Year-Old Rankings for 2017.
The most highly anticipated three-furlong workout of the California winter season will take place Saturday at Santa Anita, where Bolt d’Oro is scheduled for his first timed drill of 2018.
Although the major players on the road to the Kentucky Derby seem a little more defined this year than in 2017, when eventual winner Always Dreaming was still a maiden in mid-January, I have no doubt that little-known 3-year-olds will vault into the Derby discussion in the coming weeks. Such is the norm with young colts at this stage of the year, when they are experiencing physical and mental development.
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