Wood Memorial crucial to Cherry Wine's bid to make Kentucky Derby

Cherry Wine still needs qualifying points to secure a spot in the Kentucky Derby, and trainer Dale Romans believes the best place to get them is in the Grade 1, $1 million Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 9.

“It looks like it’s going to be a fairly small field, and we need to pick up points with a closer,” Romans said Friday at Gulfstream Park. “The less horses to have to pass, the better off you are; the less chance you’re going to get stopped or something’s going to happen and you’re not going to get the points you need.”

Qualifying points only come into play if more than 20 horses enter the Kentucky Derby, which has happened every year since 2004. Only the top 20 point earners get into the Derby field.

Cherry Wine has only five qualifying points based on his fourth-place finish in the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes at Oaklawn Park. Cherry Wine, who broke from post 13 and encountered traffic trouble, rallied from last in a 14-horse field to get beat only 4 3/4 lengths by Cupid.

“Anybody who watched the race has to think he ran a pretty damn good race,” Romans said. “In a 14-horse field coming out of the 13 hole, from last, bumped around, weaving through traffic, splitting horses – things that develop a horse to run in the Kentucky Derby.”

Cherry Wine is by Paddy O’Prado and out of the Unbridled’s Song mare C.S. Royce, who was raised on Romans’s farm. Cherry Wine won an off-the-turf maiden race at Churchill Downs on Nov. 28 and then truly opened eyes with a visually impressive first-level allowance win at Gulfstream on Jan. 9. He missed the Fountain of Youth due to a brief illness.

Romans has not yet sorted out jockey plans for Cherry Wine. Corey Lanerie has ridden Cherry Wine in his last three starts. Lanerie is also the regular rider of Brody’s Cause, who is running in next Saturday’s Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland.

Cherry Wine, Brody’s Cause, and Unbridled Outlaw, whom Romans is running in the Arkansas Derby on April 16, were all expected to breeze at Gulfstream Park on Saturday.

A field of nine or 10 is expected for the Wood Memorial. The field should come into sharper focus after several prospects have their final breezes Saturday.

The confirmed runners are Adventist, Cadeyrn, Cards of Stone, Matt King Coal, Shagaf, and Tale of S’avall. Outwork, the Tampa Bay Derby runner-up, is likely. Chad Brown, the trainer of Shagaf, might run Flexibility or My Man Sam, both of whom were expected to work at Belmont Park on Saturday.

On Wednesday, Matt King Coal worked seven furlongs in 1:25.28 over the Belmont training track, the second and final work he’ll have between his allowance win March 6 and the Wood Memorial.

“He worked very well. We planned on only two breezes, and I wanted them to count,” trainer Linda Rice said. “He’s more forward as a 3-year-old than he was as a 2-year-old. We let him stretch out, and he went pretty fast.”