Preakness: Gunnevera takes it easy in gallop
Three-time graded stakes winner Gunnevera galloped a slow and easy 1 1/2 miles at Pimlico on Tuesday but will pick up the pace Wednesday.
Jim DunleavyMay 16, 2017
Three-time graded stakes winner Gunnevera galloped a slow and easy 1 1/2 miles at Pimlico on Tuesday but will pick up the pace Wednesday.
The champion may have been knocked down a couple of times this season, but he’s coming back for more.
Conquest Mo Money, the runner-up in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby and the Grade 3 Sunland Park Derby in his last two starts, got his first taste of the Pimlico racing surface on Tuesday as he continues preparations for the Preakness.
It is an often cited fact that no horse has won the Kentucky Derby without having raced at age 2 since Apollo in 1882. In the Preakness, however, three horses in the last 17 years – Red Bullet (2000), Bernardini (2006), and Curlin (2007) – captured the middle jewel of the Triple Crown without having raced as a juvenile.
Trainer Brendan Walsh didn't go out on his own until 2011. Now he has 60 horses under his care, and one of them, a colt named Multiplier, will give Walsh his first starter in a Triple Crown race when he runs in the Preakness Stakes on Saturday.
The modern Triple Crown tilts heavily toward the Derby, with its demand for 20 horses and its overstuffed hype aided and abetted by a compliant media. The idea that an owner would skip the first race with a top horse in favor of the second has become an absurdity on a par with those pigs who keep trying to fly.
This weekend on DRF Tournaments, nine players won their way into next Saturday’s Grade 1 Preakness qualifier for the World Championship of Handicapping. Players put up $95 to play and one in seven entries will go forward. On Saturday, Jared Schledorn, David Dolinsky, Peter Acocella, Ronald Tackett, Michael Foster, and Justin Dew advanced, and on Sunday, Nicholas McMurdy, John Nichols, and Brent Sumja went through to the big Preakness game.
Royal Mo, who suffered a career-ending sesamoid fracture to his right front ankle on Sunday morning at Pimlico Race Course during what was to be his last drill for the Preakness Stakes on Saturday, was scheduled to undergo surgery on Monday to fuse the joint.
Todd Pletcher admitted to having his first anxious moment since the Derby on Monday when Kentucky Derby winner and Preakness favorite Always Dreaming stumbled at the beginning of his gallop. The anxiety proved to be fleeting as Always Dreaming completed his exercise without further incident.
The National Weather Service and AccuWeather say no rain for Baltimore on Preakness Saturday, with high temperatures cooling to the upper 70s. So, it appears the Preakness will be run on a fast track, a far cry from the wet conditions that prevailed in Louisville for the Kentucky Derby.