Rodriguez prefers to keep Withers winner Talk to Me Jimmy at home for next start

Talk to Me Jimmy, the 11-length winner of Friday’s $200,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct, will most likely make his next start in the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 4, trainer Rudy Rodriguez said Saturday.

Though Talk to Me Jimmy will be nominated to many races out of town, Rodriguez said it would be his preference to stay in New York. Talk to Me Jimmy has made all three of his starts at Aqueduct, winning two of them. Rodriguez owns a quarter interest in Talk to Me Jimmy. Controlling interest in the New York-bred son of Modernist is owned by Dustin Pusatere and Julian Myers who race under the moniker SEI Thoroughbreds.

“To me, I want to stay home,” Rodriguez said. “To tell you the truth, every time we travel outside [New York] we never run good. I’m going to try and see if we can take him straight to the Wood. Why change things up? We got to hope the weather gets a little warmer than it’s been.”

The Wood, like the Withers, is run at 1 1/8 miles around two turns.

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Rodriguez mentioned immediately after the Withers that Talk to Me Jimmy had suffered a cut on his right front foot. On Saturday, Rodriguez said the issue wasn’t too bad and that it has been cleaned up.

“He looks pretty good this morning, I thought it looked worse yesterday when I saw him bleeding,” Rodriguez said.

Rodriguez said that while he may walk Talk to Me Jimmy an extra day or two he doesn’t expect the horse to miss any significant training time. Due to the extreme cold, Belmont Park’s training track was closed Saturday and Sunday.

In the Withers, Talk to Me Jimmy was making his first start in three months. He was quite eager in the early stages of the race under Ruben Silvera but Rodriguez said that’s the way Talk to Me Jimmy typically acts.

“That’s him,” Rodriguez said. “The other day when we worked him out of the gate we meet up with a couple of Chad Brown horses and that helped us a lot. They galloped out very well to the five-eighths pole and he kept going with them.”

Though the Withers was worth 20 qualifying points toward the Kentucky Derby and the Wood offers 100 points to the winner, Rodriguez said he knows the owners, who are from the Albany region, are hopeful of making it to a race at Saratoga during the June 3-7 Belmont Stakes Racing Festival, hopefully the Belmont itself.

“They want to try and see if we can make it to Belmont Stakes weekend, they’re from Saratoga,” Rodriguez said. “Hopefully, he keeps improving and he keeps getting better. You know how this game is, today they’re good and tomorrow they fall apart.”

Talk to Me Jimmy earned an 83 Beyer Speed Figure for his victory in the Withers.

The day before Talk to Me Jimmy won the Withers, Rodriguez and SEI won a one-mile maiden race by 7 3/4 lengths with Exhibition Only, a son of Complexity who earned an 86 Beyer.

Rodriguez said all options are on the table for Exhibition Only.

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