Slow Down Andy gains 50 Derby points with Sunland Park Derby victory
Slow Down Andy picked up 50 Kentucky Derby qualifying points on Sunday when he fought off a bid from Bye Bye Bobby for a length win in the Grade 3, $500,000 Sunland Park Derby.
It was another neck back in third to Pepper Spray.
The Sunland Derby anchored a card that featured seven stakes, including the $300,000 Sunland Park Oaks won by 79-1 longshot Cleopatras Charge. Purses for the stakes totaled $1.6 million, making for the richest card of the meet.
Bye Bye Bobby and Pepper Spray earned 20 and 10 points respectively, but neither is nominated to the Triple Crown. The late nomination period closes Monday, at a cost of $6,000, according to a press relesae from Churchill Downs. Fowler Blue earned five points Sunday for his fourth-place finish in the Sunland Derby.
Slow Down Andy ($4.60) raced along the rail, just off Straight Up G as that one set fractions of 22.30 seconds for the opening quarter and 45.35 for the half-mile. Slow Down Andy took over through six furlongs in 1:09.54 and was soon confronted by Bye Bye Bobby.
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The latter was threatening in the lane, but veered out before being straightened back up and taking after Slow Down Andy. The eventual winner stayed the course along the rail and fought to the wire, while covering 1 1/8 miles on a fast track in 1:50.16.
“He dug deep and got the job done,” Mario Gutierrez, who was aboard Slow Down Andy for trainer Doug O’Neill, said in a post-race interview broadcast by Sunland.
“He was very game, that horse on the outside. My horse was slowing down a little bit, but then he changed leads and he got a second wind and we got the job done.”
The win was the third Sunland Park Derby victory for O’Neill, who captured the race in 2003 with Excessivepleasure and 2005 with Thor’s Echo.
Slow Down Andy was winning his second stakes race behind the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity in December. He has won 3 of 5 starts for earnings of $544,850.
Slow Down Andy now has a total of 60 points for the Kentucky Derby to rank fourth on the latest leaderboard issued by Churchill Downs.
Reddam Racing bred and owns Slow Down Andy, who is a son of Nyquist. Nyquist won the 2016 Kentucky Derby for Reddam, O’Neill and Gutierrez, who also teamed to win the 2012 Kentucky Derby with I’ll Have Another.
Earlier on the card, Slow Down Andy’s full brother, the 4-year-old Team Merchants, darted to a six-length win in the $100,000 Bill Thomas Memorial. Gutierrez was aboard for Reddam Racing and O’Neill.
Team Merchants ($3.60) added blinkers for the race – just like Slow Down Andy did for the Sunland Derby – and set fractions of 22.51 seconds for the opening quarter and 44.18 for the half-mile. He went on to win in hand, covering 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:14.13.
Slow Down Andy and Team Merchants are out of the mare Edwina E.
Sunland had a banner business afternoon on a sunny day in the 80s. The ontrack crowd was 16,905, said track announcer Eric Alwan. He said handle on the 12-race card from all sources was $3,442,792. There was more than $1 million bet on the Sunland Derby, which due to the pandemic had its first running since 2019.