Moretti pointing to Withers Stakes

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Moretti, the $900,000 yearling purchase who won a 1 1/8-mile maiden race at Aqueduct on Dec. 20, will stay in New York for the time being and point to the Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes here on Feb. 2, his connections said Friday.

Aron Wellman, president of Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, which owns Moretti with Mike Repole, said the Withers makes the most sense in terms of timing and distance. Moretti, trained by Todd Pletcher, still showed signs of immaturity while winning his maiden in his second start. In upper stretch, he veered out from John Velazquez’s left-handed whip, then veered back in, yet still won by 3 1/4 lengths.

“He’s a horse that’s always been hinting that two turns is what he really wanted,” Wellman said. “We’re glad to see distance does not appear to be any problem for him whatsoever. He was tactically into the race, put the race away early in the stretch, and sort of goofed around from there. At this point, to have a mile and an eighth, two-turn race before Jan. 1 is ideal foundation for the distance we want to get him to. Now, it’s a matter of fine-tuning some of those baby idiosyncrasies that he definitely still has.”

Moretti, a son of Medaglia d’Oro and a half-brother to Grade 1 winner Battle of Midway, has a similar profile to Marconi, a Pletcher-trained horse who won his maiden going 1 1/8 miles at Aqueduct in December 2017 and finished third in this year’s Withers before running sixth in the Fountain of Youth and eighth in the Blue Grass.

:: Want to get the latest news with your past performances? Try DRF’s new digital PPs