Mandella has another Brazilian star in Planetario for United Nations
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The better part of 30 years has passed since California-based trainer Richard Mandella brought a Brazilian-bred named Sandpit to New Jersey for a Grade 1 turf race. Sandpit won the 1995 Caesars International Handicap at Atlantic City Race Course, and won it again the following summer.
Atlantic City now sits vacant. The Caesars is called the United Nations and is a stakes, not a handicap, held at Monmouth. And Mandella has returned with another Brazilian-bred.
Planetario still has much to prove, but he was a multiple Grade 1 winner in Brazil and turned in an eye-catching run to win the San Juan Capistrano last month at Santa Anita, a breakthrough performance in Planetario’s third start in America. He’s one of 10 horses in the Grade 1, $600,000 United Nations and has as good a chance as anyone.
Mike Maker, his stable still laden with older grass route horses, entered three, including possible favorite Red Knight. The amazing Red Knight already has one Grade 1 win during his 9-year-old season and only needs to hold form to contend in another one. Maker won this race with a lesser horse, Aquaphobia, in 2020, and Red Knight comes out of a solid showing in the Manhattan Stakes last month at Belmont Park. There, over a 1 1/4-mile distance short of his best, Red Knight managed a creditable fourth with a wide trip. In his previous start, he captured a soft renewal of the Grade 1 Man o’ War over the U.N.’s 1 3/8-mile distance.
Maker’s other two, Therapist and Yamato, look unlikely, though less so than several others in a race that came up light by Grade 1 standards. If the U.N. lacks true quality, it also has a pace void, which could help the lightly raced and improving 4-year-old Catnip. Trained by Michael Stidham for breeders John and Susan Moore, Catnip impressed his connections as far back as his career debut in February 2022. His stakes debut last summer in the Virginia Derby, where he was seventh, might have been too much, too soon, and Catnip has gone 3 for 3 during 2023.
Returning to stakes competition last month in the 1 1/8-mile Monmouth Stakes, Catnip was getting a lovely pressing trip before two horses made middle moves at the half-mile pole, shuffling him back to fifth. At the head of the homestretch Catnip looked like he had too much ground to make up, but a powerhouse 11.58-second closing furlong got him past the Dinner Party Stakes winner Never Explain in the final strides. Catnip’s gallop-out suggested a colt ready to tackle this longer trip.
It’s possible the 1 3/8 miles is too short for Planetario, whose San Juan Capistrano score came at 1 3/4 miles, but Planetario travels strongly and has shown enough acceleration both in California and Brazil to suggest he can handle the distance. Planetario’s consecutive Grade 1s late in 2021 earned him a ticket to California, but the horse wound up on the shelf following a modest North American debut in June 2022.
Planetario got onto a steady work pattern this past February and was plenty fit for his comeback on May 13, when he finished a solid second to the capable Offlee Naughty in the 1 1/2-mile San Luis Rey. Planetario turned the tables on Offlee Naughty last month, and while a sweet inside trip didn’t hurt, Planetario aired by more than four lengths.
Six years after Sandpit’s second Caesars, Mandella brought The Tin Man to Monmouth, where he finished second to Balto Star in the 2003 United Nations. Twenty years later, Planetario can go one place better.
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