Weigh the Risks back at a mile in Go for Wand
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Trainer Chad Brown has won six stakes at Aqueduct since the fall meet began Nov. 6, and he’ll have an excellent chance to add to that total when he sends out Weigh the Risks in Saturday’s $150,000 Go for Wand Stakes.
The Go for Wand, a Grade 1 as recently 2009, will be run as a listed stakes for the first time, after losing its Grade 3 status this year. The one-mile race drew only a field of six.
Weigh the Risks, a 4-year-old daughter of Mendelssohn, has won four of her last five starts, all since she started running on dirt on a regular basis after making six of her first seven starts on turf. Weigh the Risks is coming off a 1 1/4-length victory in the seven-furlong Pumpkin Pie Stakes on Nov. 8 at Aqueduct, her first start off a 3 1/2-month layoff.
“I thought she ran to her works. It was a very, very solid race,” said Brown, who trains Weigh the Risks for Seth Klarman’s Klaravich Stables. “We’ll stretch her back out [to a mile] no problem. The one-turn mile is perfect. I’ve been impressed with the horse’s final piece of work.”
Last Sunday, Weigh the Risks worked a half-mile in 49.80 seconds over the Belmont training track, the fourth fastest of 124 works at the distance.
Manny Franco rides Weigh the Risks from post 3.
The New York-bred Stonewall Star, sidelined most of the year following surgery to remove a chip, finished a solid second to millionaire Sterling Silver in the Iroquois Stakes on Oct. 25 at Aqueduct.
“I told everybody she was going to need a race,” trainer Horacio De Paz said. “Turning for home, I thought there were a lot of people that are going to be upset with me. It was a hell of an effort. The horse that beat us is no slouch, but it was a good spot to get her started.”
Stonewall Star would be eligible for the Bay Ridge Stakes – a race she won in 2024 – for New York-breds on Dec. 28, but De Paz didn’t want to wait that long to run her again.
“She’s doing so good right now and you never know what the weather is going to be later on,” said De Paz, who trains Stonewall Star for owner-breeder Barry Schwartz.
Stonewall Star, who breaks from the outside, is likely to be on or near the lead under Jaime Rodriguez.
In 2024, Stonewall Star finished last in the then-Grade 3 Go for Wand, but she stumbled badly at the break.
Just Katherine, trained by Jose Jimenez, hasn’t been out since winning an optional $80,000 claiming race in September 2024 over Aqueduct’s main track. In June 2024, she was beaten a neck by the Brown-trained Accede in the Grade 2 Bed o’ Roses.
Zadorsky, fifth of six in the Grade 3 Chilukki on Nov. 15 at Churchill Downs; Scalable, third in the Pumpkin Pie; and Tipple, fourth in the Turnback the Alarm Stakes; complete the field.
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