Newgrange sticks to what he knows in Shared Belief Stakes

DEL MAR, Calif. – When trainer Phil D’Amato first got Newgrange in his barn, in the weeks prior to Del Mar’s meeting, he looked at the turf-heavy stakes schedule for 3-year-olds here and decided to see if Newgrange would adapt.

He didn’t.

Instead, D’Amato has had to wait until the penultimate weekend of the meeting to finally get Newgrange back to the races at Del Mar, where he is among a field of five in the $125,000 Shared Belief, a one-mile stakes for 3-year-olds that goes as race 4 on the Pacific Classic undercard Saturday.

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Newgrange worked twice on turf earlier this summer, and it did not go well. So hopes of running him in races like the Grade 2 Del Mar Derby on Saturday were abandoned. It’s back to the dirt, the surface over which Newgrange has raced exclusively, with three wins in four starts, including a maiden win at Del Mar last fall and a pair of Grade 3 stakes scores earlier this year.

“He trains on the dirt like a stakes horse,” D’Amato said Thursday morning. “He didn’t train like a stakes horse on the grass. He’s doing well. He needs to run. This is a good spot in a small field.”

Newgrange, winner of the Sham at Santa Anita and Southwest at Oaklawn earlier this year, has not raced since Feb. 26, when he was sixth of 11 as the odds-on favorite in the Grade 2 Rebel at Oaklawn. He was trained for his first four starts by Bob Baffert, but when his large ownership group – headed by Starlight Racing and SF Racing – decided Newgrange wasn’t going to be Kentucky Derby material, he was offered at a sale as a horse of racing age, and acquired for $325,000 by David Bernsen, Little Red Feather Racing, and Rockingham Ranch, and turned over to D’Amato.

Newgrange will see two familiar faces in the starting gate. Current Baffert runners High Connection and Armagnac are among his opponents, along with Go Joe Won and Il Bellator.

High Connection holds the edge on current form, having won the Los Alamitos Derby going 1 1/8 miles in his last start July 9.

Armagnac was given a try on turf Aug. 7 in the Grade 3 La Jolla, and after finishing fourth of six is back on dirt, over which he’s won twice. But in his previous stakes tries, albeit against far tougher competition, he was well beaten.

Go Joe Won, who leaves from the rail, overcame a stumble at the start to score a front-running win against maidens last time out.

Il Bellator, the California Derby winner in April at Golden Gate Fields, has raced on turf and synthetic. Dirt is an unknown, but he should get some pace to rally into.