Pletcher has Copper Town, Prince Lucky for Hal's Hope

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – There are 25 horses nominated to Saturday’s Grade 3 Hal’s Hope, and five are from trainer Todd Pletcher’s barn. On Sunday, Pletcher confirmed he plans to run two of the five, Copper Town and Prince Lucky, in the one-mile fixture for older horses.

Copper Town is coming off a seventh-place finish as the 3-2 favorite over a sloppy track in the Grade 3 Fred Hooper here, while Prince Lucky has not started since winning the Easy Goer last June at Belmont Park.

“Obviously we’re looking to get Copper Town back on a fast track,” Pletcher said. “It’s the first time off the layoff for Prince Lucky, but he’s been training well.”

Among Pletcher’s other nominees for the Hal’s Hope are Vino Rosso, idle since finishing fifth in the Travers, and Noble Indy, who returned from a long layoff to be a well-beaten fourth behind X Y Jet over a sloppy track in a six-furlong allowance here last week.

“Vino Rosso had his first five-eighths this weekend and he’s doing well,” Pletcher said. “I like the way he’s come back, although we have no firm race plans for him at the moment. The race for Noble Indy was too short and on a sloppy track, but hopefully it will help him down the road. Ideally, we were looking for a seven-eighths, which we couldn’t get, so the options were either run him in that race or in the Hal’s Hope, and we just felt we needed to get him started and take it from there.”

Entries for the Hal’s Hope, one of three stakes on Saturday’s card, will be drawn Wednesday.

Ortiz leads jockey standings

Irad Ortiz Jr. overtook defending jockey champion Luis Saez atop the standings after turning in a hat trick Sunday. Saez is serving two concurrent five-day riding suspensions.

Despite the big day, Ortiz was not the riding star here Sunday, with Emisael Jaramillo doing him one better by posting four victories on the 12-race program. All four of Jaramillo’s winners were favorites, including Mr French ($5.20), who posted his fifth consecutive win – three of them since being claimed by trainer Marcial Navarro for a bargain $8,000.