La Verdad, Palace unlikely to run in Breeders’ Cup

ELMONT, N.Y. – It appears as though trainer Linda Rice is going to sit out the Breeders’ Cup.

Rice had pre-entered both La Verdad and Palace to Breeders’ Cup races next weekend, but said Friday that she intended to run both in stakes races at Belmont Park this Saturday instead.

La Verdad, pre-entered in both the $1 million Filly and Mare Sprint and $1.5 million Sprint, is scheduled to run in Saturday’s $150,000 Iroquois Stakes, a race she won last year. La Verdad would have to be supplemented to the Breeders’ Cup for $100,000. The Filly and Mare Sprint is contested at seven furlongs, a distance that is just beyond her best. If she ran in the Sprint, at her preferred six-furlong distance, the speedy La Verdad would likely get hooked up with front-running males Runhappy and Private Zone.

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Palace, a multiple Grade 1 winner in 2014, has run only three times this year without a victory. He is entered in Saturday’s Hudson Handicap at 6 1/2 furlongs. Palace sustained a foot injury when he stumbled at the gate in the John Morrissey Stakes at Saratoga in August. An issue with that foot cropped up again and he missed a workout last week that Rice felt was important in order to make the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.

While Rice indicated it would be unlikely that either horse would run back in the Breeders’ Cup, she said Friday she has not ruled it out with either horse.

“I don’t have to declare that I’m out of the Breeders’ Cup with either horse at this point,” Rice said.

Final entries for the Breeders’ Cup are due Monday.