Corniche remained unbeaten and nailed down the Eclipse Award as champion 2-year-old male with this front-running victory over Pappacap, mirroring the result of the American Pharoah five weeks earlier.
Rattle N Roll continued his steady progression with his best race yet in his fourth start, easily handling a subpar field for this race while earning a career-best Beyer Speed Figure and giving every indication that the farther he goes, and the older he gets, the better.
Jack Christopher followed up his runaway debut win at Saratoga with a sharp victory in the Champagne Stakes. He pressed a strong pace, opened up a commanding lead in upper stretch, and held safe the only other horse within the area code in the final furlong.
Corniche, a dazzling debut winner sprinting at Del Mar with a 98 Beyer Speed Figure, successfully stretched out around two turns in only his second start and won comfortably, but with a figure well below that of his debut.
First, Major General outdueled the stubborn favorite, Stellar Tap. Then, he held off a late charge from longshot Tough to Tame. And then, he had to wait even longer, circling under the lights beneath the twin spires while jockey Javier Castellano hopped off to make his case to the stewards on the phone following a claim of foul. But ultimately, Major General emerged the official victor of the Grade 3, $300,000 Iroquois Stakes.
Churchill Downs will not award Kentucky Derby qualifying points to any horse that is trained by an individual that is banned by the track for the 2022 running of the race, the track announced on Friday. The rule, which will effectively sideline any horse trained by Bob Baffert in the run-up to the Derby, was announced as part of Churchill’s “Road to the Derby” schedule.
In yet another twist to the Medina Spirit case, the post-race urine sample from the 2021 Kentucky Derby winner has apparently been tainted and seriously depleted, leading the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to file a motion for order in Franklin Circuit Court in Kentucky.
The complexion of the Triple Crown trail will change next year as Oaklawn Park announced Tuesday that the Arkansas Derby will be run five weeks ahead of the Kentucky Derby on April 2 instead of its traditional three weeks out, and that the purse of the Grade 1 race would be boosted to $1.25 million.
A Kentucky judge has ordered the Kentucky Horse Racing Commission to allow further testing on a urine sample from Kentucky Derby winner Medina Spirit at the request of the horse’s connections.
A split of the post-Kentucky Derby blood sample pulled from winner Medina Spirit confirmed the presence of the regulated corticosteroid betamethasone, the attorney for the colt's trainer, Bob Baffert, confirmed Wednesday.
