Santin has yet to run a poor race
The blue Godolphin silks do not regularly sail around the Indiana Grand racing ovals, but that is where a colt named Santin began his career last September. Trainer Brendan Walsh said he wasn’t certain he shipped a fully fit horse from Ellis Park, where Santin was based at the time, to Indiana Grand, now called Horseshoe Racing and Casino.
“He was just barely ready, and I thought if nothing else the race would set him up for Keeneland” in October, Walsh said.
Santin did wind up racing at Keeneland, but only after he’d cleared the maiden ranks at Indiana Grand with a dominant 3 1/2-length win. A little more than three weeks later, Santin kicked in sweetly to win a first-level allowance race over a mile on grass, impressing his connections enough that they shipped him for the Grade 1 Hollywood Derby on Nov. 27 at Del Mar.
“I wouldn’t have sent him if I’d known they were going to give him the 14 hole,” Walsh said.
Yet even stranded from that wide draw while facing stronger competition and racing wide without cover around the second turn, Santin came relentlessly to finish second by a neck to Beyond Brilliant, who’d led on an easy pace.
Walsh said he’d stopped training Santin twice earlier in his career because of relatively minor issues. The colt, by Distorted Humor out of Sentiero Italia, has all the makings of a horse meant to improve at 4, and Walsh shipped him earlier this week from Palm Meadows in Florida to make his 2022 debut in the Fair Grounds Stakes.
“I don’t think we’ve seen anywhere near the best of the horse,” Walsh said. “He has bags of raw talent.”
Walsh runs another promising thrice-started horse in North County in the Rachel Alexandra Stakes on Saturday. North County also made the trip from Kentucky to win an Indiana turf mile in her debut, clearing the maiden ranks Sept. 29, two days after Santin.
“That’s where we ended up last year with no grass at Churchill,” Walsh said, referring to Churchill Downs’s turf-course replacement last fall.
North County comes to the Rachel Alexandra unbeaten in three starts but faces a higher-quality field Saturday than she’s met.
“This race ought to be a good test to see where we stand with her,” said Walsh.