If you think the horses who need to run big this weekend will, now is probably the last chance to grab a price in excess of what they will be on Kentucky Derby Day.
Wood Memorial Day at Aqueduct is the unofficial start of spring and quality racing in New York, with the Wood and the Carter Handicap the first Grade 1 races in the Empire State since the Cigar Mile last Thanksgiving weekend. This year’s unusual 12-race all-dirt card, however, is also a bit of a Groundhog Day – a reminder that there’s still some chill in the air and that save for a four-race stretch of stakes racing, winter racing is not quite over in these parts.
With so much attention paid to the brilliantly fast Social Inclusion, it’s been easy to overlook the fact there is an undefeated multiple graded stakes winner in the field for Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million Wood Memorial at Aqueduct.
Owners, trainers, breeders, and fans all dream of seeing a young racehorse start his career so brilliantly that his potential appears limitless. There haven’t been many such Thoroughbred stars in the United States in recent years, but an extraordinarily precocious colt has suddenly burst onto the racing scene.
Ring Weekend is virtually assured a spot in the Kentucky Derby field by virtue of the 50 qualifying points he earned for his gate-to-wire triumph four weeks ago in the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby. He will be the odds-on favorite against nine other 3-year-olds in the 1 1/8-mile Calder Derby, which does not carry any Kentucky Derby qualifying points.
Trainer Mark Casse is pointing Conquest Titan and Thundergram to the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park, and the horses give him a two-pronged approach to the April 12 race.
The two main speed horses in Saturday's Wood Memorial Stakes at Aqueduct, Social Inclusion and Uncle Sigh, drew the two outside posts in a field of 11.
John Sadler, the trainer of Candy Boy, and Lee Searing, who owns Candy Boy with his wife, Susan, knew it was a calculated risk to manage Candy Boy the way they have this spring, running him in a Kentucky Derby prep worth 10 points for first, skipping one worth 50 points to the winner, and then knowing that a race worth 100 for first would determine their fate for the May 3 Derby.
Schoolofhardrocks had finished a well-beaten fourth in the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes on March 8 when jockey Joe Talamo immediately began campaigning for a start in Saturday’s $1 million Santa Anita Derby.
If California Chrome performs the way Art Sherman thinks he can on Saturday in the $1 million Santa Anita Derby, look out. Here comes Art Sherman.
