Thorpedo Anna works half-mile in the mist
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SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. -- Trainer Kenny McPeek turned 62 years old on Friday. In Thorpedo Anna, he has the gift that keeps on giving.
Friday morning, Thorpedo Anna picked up the paces in her training toward a start against the boys in the Grade 1, $1.25 million Travers Stakes here on Aug. 24, working a half-mile shortly after 5:30 a.m. With a heavy mist obscuring view of the poles on the Oklahoma training track, Thorpedo Anna will not be credited with an official time. Daily Racing Form caught her galloping out a quarter-mile past the wire in 26.53 seconds.
“Beautiful, very, very good, real easy, in hand,” Danny Ramsey, Thorpedo Anna’s exercise rider, said. “I didn’t move my hands on her.”
McPeek moved the workout up from Saturday as he was concerned about a potential off track due to forecasted rains. He wasn’t worried about time on Friday.
“They don’t pay us either way on that one, it doesn’t matter,” McPeek said. “I just told him a happy half; let a horse do what they’re capable of doing within themselves. She’s bouncing while cooling out so that’s what’s most important.”
Thorpedo Anna will attempt to become the first filly since Lady Rotha in 1915 to win the Travers. She has all but cemented the 3-year-old filly championship by virtue of her Grade 1 victories in the Kentucky Oaks, Acorn, and Coaching Club American Oaks.
“She’s doing great; she might be getting better,” McPeek said.
In the Travers, Thorpedo Anna will take on a group that includes Belmont Stakes and Haskell winner Dornoch, Grade 1 winners Fierceness and Sierra Leone, the undefeated Unmatched Wisdom, and possibly the Grade 1 winner Muth.
“It’s a tough race," McPeek said. “She beats that group, just walk her right over to the racing Hall of Fame.”
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