Always in a Tiz is scheduled to return to Oaklawn for the Grade 3, $300,000 Southwest on Feb. 18, setting up a rematch of the top three in last month’s $150,000 Smarty Jones.
The Kentucky Derby has been run 138 times, but in those years only six times has a trainer been able to win it in consecutive years, and not since Bob Baffert in 1997 and 1998. This year, it will be Doug O’Neill’s turn to try and join that list.
Trainer Todd Pletcher landed seven of the 20 horses on the inaugural Derby Watch list for 2013, including Violence, whom Mike Watchmaker, Daily Racing Form’s national handicapper, installed as the ante-post favorite for the Derby at 6-1.
Todd Pletcher might not have the winner of the 139th Derby on May 4 at Churchill Downs, and Bob Baffert might not either. But between them, they have 11 of the 23 separately listed interests in Pool 1 of the 2013 Kentucky Derby Future Wager, a development that seems to bode well for both.
Big Lute, a dominant debut winner of a maiden special weight sprint at Oaklawn last Friday, could make his stakes debut in the Grade 2, $600,000 Rebel, trainer Steve Hobby said on Tuesday.
My Name Is Michael and Speak Logistics, the third- and fourth-place finishers in Saturday’s Grade 3 Sam F. Davis at Tampa, could return here on Feb. 23 in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth
Between them, trainers Todd Pletcher and Bob Baffert have 52 of the 369 horses nominated to this year’s Triple Crown, and their strength in numbers was on display again over the weekend, when both saw leading prospects in their barns record important victories.
Bob Baffert and Todd Pletcher have dominated the Derby landscape thus far in 2013, but you can never count out a Steve Asmussen-trained performer, especially one that is moving forward with each race.
Revolutionary’s thrilling neck victory in Saturday’s Grade 3 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct not only earned him a spot on the Triple Crown trail, but it also earned him a trip to south Florida, where he will train while his connections plot out his next race.
Trainer John Terranova left his options open on Saturday with Falling Sky, entering his recently acquired 3-year-old in both the seven-furlong Hutcheson at Gulfstream Park and the 1 1/16-mile Sam F. Davis at Tampa Bay Downs. And in the end, Terranova made the right choice.
