Ride On Curlin has contested the pace in each of his last two starts, and trainer Billy Gowan hopes to change tactics Saturday, when the horse runs from post 4 in the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park.
When the Blue Grass Stakes is run at Keeneland on Saturday, it is unlikely to produce the next Kentucky Derby winner. Though it was once the most important 3-year-old prep race, it became irrelevant after Keeneland replaced its dirt track with a synthetic surface. None of the seven horses who captured the Blue Grass on Polytrack proceeded to win on Churchill Downs’s dirt; most ran dismally.
If Greg Gilchrist, acting on behalf of Scott Sherwood’s Blinkers On Racing Stable partnership, had not gone to $30,000 to buy a filly by Not for Love at the second session of the Midlantic sale of 2-year-olds in training in May of 2008 . . .
Dale Romans hangs around enough horseplayers to know the nuances of the tote board, which is one reason the veteran trainer will be running Medal Count back on just seven days’ rest in the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes on Saturday.
Albano, who was placed fourth in the Louisiana Derby in his most recent start, will bypass the May 3 Kentucky Derby, according to his owner and breeder, Brereton C. Jones.
California Chrome jogged a mile Wednesday at Los Alamitos, his first day of training since a comprehensive win in the $1 million Santa Anita Derby last Saturday.
Saturday, in the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby, Bayern – who debuted in the same Jan. 4 Santa Anita maiden race as stablemate Hoppertunity – will make his bid to join the Kentucky Derby field.
Wicked Strong and Bayern are the two newcomers to this week’s Derby Watch top 20.
An oversubscribed field of 3-year-olds has been entered to run Saturday in the 90th running of the Grade 1, $750,000 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland.
California Chrome just made my Kentucky Derby superfecta play much less complicated.
