Sharp Azteca will likely run next in Pegasus World Cup

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - After dominating Saturday’s Grade 1 Cigar Mile at Aqueduct, Sharp Azteca will return to south Florida this week and will most likely make his next start in the $16 million Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 27, trainer Jorge Navarro said Sunday.

“It’s 95 percent yes, we’re going in the Pegasus,” Navarro said by phone from south Florida. “The horse will tell me where he’s at once he gets here. I’m sure he’s going to be all right. I’m going to have enough time to get him ready.”

Navarro told the New York Racing Association publicity department that Sharp Azteca came out of the Cigar Mile with a cut on a hind leg, but called it superficial.

The Pegasus is run at 1 1/8 miles, a distance Sharp Azteca has yet to run. He did win the Grade 3 Monmouth Cup, a 1 1/16-mile race, by 7 1/2 lengths in July at Monmouth Park. Among the horses he will have to face in the Pegasus is Gun Runner, the Breeders’ Cup Classic winner and likely 2017 Horse of the Year.

“That horse is a serious horse, Gun Runner,” Navarro said. “Seeing how [Sharp Azteca] rated yesterday, we might have a chance.”

In the Cigar Mile, Sharp Azteca sat third early under Javier Castellano, took command turning for home and drew off to win by 5 1/4 lengths over Mind Your Biscuits. Sharp Azteca ran a mile in 1:35.17 and earned a career-best Beyer Speed Figure of 115.

“We have a serious horse, he’s just coming into himself,” Navarro said. “I think people are really starting to enjoy this horse.”

Owners of horses interested running in the Pegasus must make an initial payment - believed to be about $350,000 - by Dec. 15. The remainder of the $1 million payment to buy a spot into the field, which is limited to 12 runners, is due some time in January.

Mind Your Biscuits, runner-up in the Cigar Mile, will van to Palm Meadows, a training center in south Florida, on Wednesday, trainer Chad Summers said.
Summers called the Pegasus “a longshot” but did not completely rule it out. Other options would include the General George at Laurel Park in February as a prep for the Golden Shaheen in Dubai, or the Gulfstream Park Sprint as a prep for the Grade 1 Carter at Aqueduct in April.

“If he’s tearing down the barn and wants to go to the track, then the Pegasus will grow on our list of possibilities,” said Summers, who added the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap at Belmont Park on June 9 “is a race I’d really like to win.”