Mother Goose loses Ria Antonia

ELMONT, N.Y. – With the presence of Kentucky Oaks winner Untapable, the field for the Grade 1, $300,000 Mother Goose at Belmont Park on June 28 figured to be short. It got a little shorter Wednesday, when the connections of Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies winner Ria Antonia had to cancel their planned trip to New York due to a medication issue.

According to her owner, Ron Paolucci, Ria Antonia was recently treated with Clenbuterol, a legal bronchodilator that in New York cannot be administered within 14 days of a race. Ria Antonia is based at Churchill Downs with trainer Tom Amoss.

“I’m very, very, very aggravated, but there’s nothing I can do,” Paolucci said Wednesday. “I’m not sure what happened, and we don’t want to take a chance. I really wanted to run one turn against that filly, but unfortunately, it’s a no-go.”

“That filly,” of course, is Untapable, who will be a prohibitive favorite in the Mother Goose for owner Ron Winchell and trainer Steve Asmussen. Untapable has won 5 of 7 career starts, with her worst performance having come in last year’s Juvenile Fillies, a race in which Ria Antonia finished second but was elevated to first by the stewards, who deemed that Ria Antonia was interfered with by She’s a Tiger.

With Ria Antonia out of the mix, the prospective lineup for the Mother Goose includes only two other definite starters, House Rules and Stopchargingmaria, and possible runners America, Aqua Regia, and Princess Violet.

House Rules, sixth in the Grade 1 Acorn, remained in New York, and her training is being overseen by Jimmy Jerkens, the son of Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens, who has remained at Gulfstream this summer.

House Rules ran a deceptively good race in the Acorn, saving ground early but then being forced to go six wide in the stretch. Still, she was beaten just two lengths for third.

“She didn’t run too bad,” Allen Jerkens said from Florida. “She got parked out pretty good. When it didn’t look like it was going to [open] inside, he took her out.”