Nashville Derby likely to go to one of four Euro shippers
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At $3 million, the Nashville Derby offers one of the five highest purses in North American Thoroughbred racing. Only the Kentucky Derby, the Breeders’ Cup Classic, and the Breeders’ Cup Turf surpass it.
One might think that an age-restricted race with such outsized prize money would draw a spectacular field. Not so much.
A dozen were entered in the Grade 2 Nashville Derby, but no more than 10 will run, with Blackmail and Fuzzbuster likely scratches, per their trainers. Combined, the group has produced six graded or group stakes wins, all those from the four European-based horses set to start. Four Americans make their open-stakes debut.
Overseas shippers have won both Nashville Derbies since the base purse rose to this astronomical level, and one of them will win this year, too.
Only Kentucky-breds are eligible for the full $3 million purse. Those bred elsewhere compete for a mere $1.75 million. The money machine will be turned on throughout Saturday’s 12-race program, the most important of Kentucky Downs’s seven-day season. The five stakes races alone are worth $9.5 million including the Kentucky-bred subsidy.
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The Nashville Derby – run at 1 5/16 miles, one lap around the quirky Kentucky Downs course – is the richest of the stakes and goes as race 8, immediately following the $2 million Turf Cup, the best of the stakes. There’s star power in two of the other races – Cy Fair in the Music City, Classic Q in the Ladies Turf. The stakes sequence opens with a competitive renewal of the Turf Sprint.
The proceedings get underway at 12:25 p.m. Central, and ontrack patrons should bring a cooling spritz. The temperature will be just about as high as the purse structure, approaching 100 degrees.
Causeway is the 5-2 morning-line favorite and does figure to be favored for his world-famous connections, trainer Aidan O’Brien and jockey Ryan Moore. O’Brien has run one horse at Kentucky Downs; Moore makes his local debut. Causeway has ability, no doubt, but does not stand out.
Causeway has been at times termed “babyish” and even “lazy,” doing for the most part only as much as he needs. O’Brien raced him in cheek pieces for a couple of starts, took them off when Causeway narrowly won the Gallinule Stakes in May, then put the cheek pieces right back on for the Group 2 King Edward at Royal Ascot, which turned into a two-horse race, with Causeway edging Ancient Egypt. That colt came back with a good second in the Group 1 Grand Prix de Paris before finishing a close fourth with the wrong trip facing older rivals in the Grade 1 Christophe Clement at Saratoga.
Causeway also ran in the Grand Prix de Paris – kind of. Attending the early pace, Causeway retreated and finished last of seven with no clear excuse.
Causeway, somewhat hard to trust at the expected price, often has gone forward in his races, but Nil Bua Gan Dua might be ridden more aggressively to the lead from a wide post. Trained by Joseph O’Brien, Nil Bua Gan Dua after eight starts hasn’t yet turned in a performance that would win the Nashville Derby, but he exits a career best, a listed stakes win at Gowran Park, his first start racing with cheek pieces. Nil Bua Gan Dua, like Causeway, cuts back from 1 1/2-mile contests.
Gostam comes from Germany for trainer Andreas Wohler after an even worse showing than Causeway’s, a 24-length defeat as the second favorite in the 18-runner German Derby. Gostam showed star potential last year at 2, winning three German starts by open lengths, but might not have trained on this year. He struggled to win a German Group 2 as an odds-on favorite in his 3-year-old bow, then pulled too hard while racing in tight quarters when finishing a decent eighth, beaten only 3 1/2 lengths, in the French Derby. The jury is out.
That leaves, among the international contingent, Glacius, the field’s lone Grade 1 winner. Based in England with trainer Hugo Palmer, Glacius got his Grade 1 in the United States, going wire to wire under Luis Saez in the Saratoga Derby on Aug. 8. Saez rides again and Glacius is back stateside after going home following his sharp New York win.
“He loves traveling. Sometimes you get these horses that grow a leg when they get on an airplane. He’s been in really good order at home. He got out of quarantine yesterday and trained great this morning,” Palmer said Wednesday.
Palmer said he’s not opposed to setting the pace again Saturday but wonders if one or both of the horses trained by the O’Briens, who stay a mile and a half, will set out to lead and turn the race into a stamina test.
“He doesn’t by any means need the lead,” said Palmer, who feels as good about Glacius on the Euro-style Kentucky Downs track as over Saratoga’s standard flat oval. “He’s prepared for that course.”
Glacius in his five starts back home ran in four races worth less than $50,000 and one with a purse of about $125,000. Even the Saratoga Derby purse, $750,000, pales in comparison to the Nashville Derby. Good thing Glacius likes shipping. It’s raining money Saturday at Kentucky Downs.
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