Will Take Charge targeting Jockey Club Gold Cup next

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Will Take Charge will skip the Grade 1 Woodward Stakes on Aug. 30 and point to the Grade 1 Jockey Club Gold Cup at Belmont Park on Sept. 27, trainer D. Wayne Lukas said Monday.

Will Take Charge, last year’s 3-year-old champion, is 1 for 6 this year, with the win coming in the Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap in April. Since then, Will Take Charge has lost three straight races, including a third-place finish in the Grade 1 Whitney here Aug. 2.

“We’ve run pretty much across the country every dance, and so I feel like if we take a little bit of a breather, we can probably come with a real good rush in these next two,” Lukas said. “The ultimate goal is obviously the Breeders’ Cup.”

Will Take Charge finished second in the Breeders’ Cup Classic last fall.

Lukas said he has backed off in Will Take Charge’s training over the last two weeks.

“At some point in the summer, we had to back off a little bit. You can’t back off a lot,” Lukas said. “I backed off for about 10 or 12 days. I’ve been galloping, jogging, mixing it in. He’s put on about 10, 15, 20 pounds doing that, so I like what I see.”

Lukas also said that his pair of 2-year-olds, the colt Mr Z and the filly Take Charge Brandi, would skip the Hopeful and Spinaway stakes, respectively.

Mr Z, the runner-up in both the Sanford and Saratoga Special, will point to the Iroquois Stakes, while Take Charge Brandi, second in the Schuylerville and fifth in the Adirondack, will run in the Pocahontas Stakes. Both races at Churchill Downs are contested around two turns and are Win and You’re In races for their respective Breeders’ Cup divisions.