Weekend GamePlan: Picks for Tampa Bay Derby, Frank E. Kilroe Mile, Hillsborough

Don’t look now, but this is turning into one of the more interesting crops of early season 3-year-olds. Two more stakes Saturday, at Tampa Bay and Santa Anita, continue separating wheat from chaff.

Tampa Bay Derby

This race came up deep and interesting, with a “Big 3” – Further Ado, Powershift, and Canaletto.

I’m skeptical regarding Further Ado as he launches his season. We have workout video of several Payson drills, which look perfectly fine. Yet the main driver of Further Ado’s reputation remains his Keeneland maiden win. There’s every reason to cast a cold eye on his Kentucky Jockey Club; Further Ado ground that one out, and frankly, the race has come back weak.

The maiden performance was about as flashy as they come. Reminds me of a phrase the great jockey Ryan Moore used when I interviewed him in April 2018 about the colt Mendelssohn’s chances in the Kentucky Derby. Mendelssohn had won the UAE Derby at Meydan by almost 19 lengths. Moore advised caution: “I guess that track can tell you lies,” he said. Indeed, some tracks have a way of inflating performance – Keeneland, for instance. Mendessohn finished last in the Derby.

Looks like Powershift came close to making the races last summer. Unfortunately, there’s no work video since his Feb. 7 debut, but the stuff from before the race shows why he was such a short price. Somehow, despite running a supremely fast race, Powershift lost. How good is the horse who beat him? Can’t say yet, since he’s run only once; he works like a good colt, not great.

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Powershift could be favored here as a once-started maiden. I’m a touch skeptical he runs back to the big figure.

Canaletto’s acceleration from the three-sixteenths past the eighth pole in his debut and lone start was something to see. This horse is fast. I’m worried he’s going to be too fast for his own good stretching out to two turns.

Few will gravitate toward Hulkamania. I’ll give him a try at very fair odds.

Hulkamania in his easy debut win didn’t run nearly as fast as Powershift or Canaletto. That can be an asset! Instead of merely trying to maintain, he can – if the horse is as good as I think he might be – take a significant step forward.

I liked every part of Hulkamania’s race, a measured performance that conferred important lessons and ended with a subtly strong gallop-out. He has the body and stride rhythm of a two-turn horse, and while there’s no video, those post-race Payson work times jump off the page.

Frank E. Kilroe Mile

If Mi Hermano Ramon runs his best race, he’s the most likely winner in the Kilroe Mile – and I think he’s going to run his best race.

Mi Hermano Ramon caught my eye while looking hard at the San Felipe Stakes on this card. His six-furlong breeze on Feb. 22 – timed in an eye-catching 1:11.60 – came while placed inside stablemate So Happy, the San Felipe second choice.

Granted, this was a hardened 6-year-old working with a February 3-year-old, but at the same time, Mi Hermano Ramon is a turf horse working on dirt against a dirt horse. The 3-year-old took the worst of it. When the video cuts, Mi Hermano Ramon is pulling steadily clear going out around the clubhouse turn.

That’s one of two recent works for which there’s video. Mi Hermano Ramon wore blinkers in all his pre-layoff work videos, but not in these two drills. He also appears to travel like a different, smoother, better version of his 2025 self.

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He’s getting a great trip here behind a fast, contested pace, and Mi Hermano Ramon stands ready to capitalize.

Hillsborough

Watch the 2024 renewal of the Grade 1 Matriarch and see Child of the Moon, after a less-than-ideal trip, make the lead about a furlong into the gallop-out. That’s because Child of the Moon is a good horse, but also because the Matriarch is a one-mile race and Child of the Moon is a nine-furlong grass horse.

Not too many nine-furlong grass stakes of import: It’s the Diana at Saratoga, then races like this, and surely trainer Chad Brown has aimed at the Hillsborough since Child of the Moon got back onto a steady work pattern in mid-December. Her comeback race looked perfect. She did enough to move forward, not so much that she can’t.

And One More Time is going to outrun her odds here, too, but Child of the Moon will run her down.

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