Remsen winner Mo Town eyes New York path to Kentucky Derby

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Mo Town, No Dozing, and Takaful – the first three finishers in Saturday’s Grade 2 Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct – are headed to various parts of Florida in the coming days and could all take different paths to try to get to the Kentucky Derby on May 6 at Churchill Downs.

Mo Town won the Remsen by 2 1/2 lengths over No Dozing, with Takaful, the 4-5 favorite, another 3 1/2 lengths back in third.

On Wednesday, Mo Town is scheduled to leave Belmont Park by van for the Payson Park training center in Indiantown, Fla., about 90 miles northwest of Gulfstream Park. Trainer Tony Dutrow said he chose Payson Park as the winter base for 10 of his horses in part because he didn’t want to be obligated to run at a particular racetrack. Horsemen pay for their own stall space at Payson.

Dutrow said Sunday morning that he would prefer to have Mo Town take the New York route to the Kentucky Derby, utilizing the Grade 3 Gotham on March 4 and then the Grade 1 Wood Memorial on April 8 as his two pre-Derby starts.

“I plan on having him 80-85 percent ready, and he’ll do very well in the Gotham – that’s not a race he needs to win – and then I want to go from the Wood to the Derby,” Dutrow said. “The Wood is a proven race, and that’s the way I want to go.”

Dutrow said he needs to discuss his plan with the Coolmore connections of Michael Tabor, Derrick Smith, and Susan Magnier. Coolmore bought a majority interest in Mo Town from Dutrow’s Team D Stables following his maiden win at Belmont on Sept. 24. The Remsen has not produced a Derby winner since Thunder Gulch, who won the 1994 Remsen and the 1995 Derby. Coincidentally, Tabor bought Thunder Gulch prior to the Remsen.

In the Remsen, Mo Town made an early move to stalk the front-running Takaful before taking over in upper stretch. He covered 1 1/8 miles in 1:51.58 and earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 86.

“He ran like he was 100 percent, but I don’t know if he was 100 percent,” Dutrow said. “In training this horse for this race, I never used this horse one bit to try and win the Remsen. I felt like we strongly needed to run in the Remsen, needed to get another race into this colt this year. As far as being a race that needed to be won, I never felt like that; he needed to run well. Now, having seen all this, how could you be in a much better situation?”

Dutrow said Mo Town was “pristine” Sunday morning. Dutrow said that Mo Town would be in light training through December before beginning to pick it up in January.

No Dozing, who raced wide throughout, did well to finish a clear second in the Remsen. Trainer Arnaud Delacour said he would likely ship No Dozing to Tampa Bay Downs by the end of the week and freshen him up for a 3-year-old campaign that may not start until the Tampa Bay Derby on March 11. There is the Grade 3 Sam F. Davis Stakes on Feb. 11 before then.

“The Remsen was kind of a testing race. I want to make sure I take my time bringing him back,” Delacour said. “If he misses the Sam Davis, it wouldn’t be the end of the world for me. We’ll see how he comes along.”

Takaful broke awkwardly in the Remsen and then got a bit keen going to the front under Jose Ortiz. Though he relaxed on the backside, he came up empty in the stretch.

“It was a big step up. Two nice horses were 1-2; we might have been third-best anyway,” said trainer Kiaran McLaughlin. “He doesn’t have to go a mile and an eighth again until April. We need to keep racing for seasoning. He did rate well after he went that fast first eighth.”

Takaful will eventually head to the Palm Meadows training center in south Florida, but McLaughlin was not sure when or where Takaful would make his 3-year-old debut.