Mongolian Saturday gets rest, will skip Turf Sprint

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner Mongolian Saturday will miss his first scheduled start of the year, the Gulfstream Park Turf Sprint on Feb. 6, after being sent to the farm for a short rest, according to trainer Enebish Ganbat.

Mongolian Saturday outlasted Eclipse Award finalist Lady Shipman to register a neck decision in the BC Turf Sprint. He closed out his 2015 campaign six weeks later with a fifth-place finish in the Hong Kong Sprint.

“I sent him out to the farm two days ago,” Ganbat said. “He’s a little bit muscle sore, and he needs a little rest. We ran him a couple of times every 20 days last summer, and it was too much. And his race in Hong Kong was a really hard race.”

Ganbat said an issue with his pony boy hampered his horse’s chances in Hong Kong.

“The pony rider said, ‘I cannot take your crazy horse to the post,’ so he let him go, and my horse breezed before the race,” Ganbat said. “Now I understand how good the pony people are we have here, but I was still happy with his performance. The Hong Kong horses are very fast. They finished in the first four places, and we were fifth.”

Ganbat said he still plans to take Mongolian Saturday to Dubai for the $1 million Al Quoz Sprint, carded at 1,000 meters on the turf March 26.

“We got an invitation to the race in Dubai, and we still plan to go,” Ganbat said. “I’d like to get one race for him here before Dubai, any kind of race at five furlongs, maybe around the first week in March.”