Work All Week breezes towards 2015 debut

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Champion sprinter Work All Week, unraced since winning the Breeder’s Cup Sprint at Santa Anita on Nov. 1, breezed five furlongs in 59.20 seconds over a “good” track Sunday at Churchill Downs Trackside as he prepares for his first start of 2015.

Trackside clocker Richard McCreey caught Work All Week in splits of 12.40 seconds, 24, 35.40, and 47.60. He galloped out six furlongs in 1:12.40. It was the fifth breeze this year for Work All Week, and second at Trackside, Churchill’s off-track training facility located about five miles away from the main facility.
Regular jockey Florent Geroux was aboard for the breeze, and McCreery said the rider was motionless on the horse.

Earlier Sunday morning before the workout, trainer Roger Brueggemann said the most likely return race for Work All Week would be the Grade 3 Aristides at Churchill Downs on May 30.

Brueggemann has about 20 horses at Trackside this year, with another string at Indiana Grand. He does not expect to stable more than a few, if any, this summer in Chicago, where in recent years his stable was based. He still intends to van some periodically to race at Arlington this summer.

Work All Week went 5 for 6 in 2014 during his championship run for his owner/breeder, Midwest Thoroughbreds. He was perfect on dirt, with his only loss being when second in an Illinois-bred stakes race on Polytrack at Arlington in July. He followed that defeat with wins in the Grade 3 Phoenix at Keeneland and the BC Sprint.

This year’s Breeders’ Cup will be at Keeneland, and the affinity Work All Week showed for the new Keeneland dirt track last fall could bode well for his hopes of defending his BC Sprint title.

Another top Brueggemann trainee, graded stakes-winning turf marathoner The Pizza Man, also worked Sunday, going six furlongs in 1:16.20, again with Geroux up. He last raced Nov. 27, finishing third in the Grade 2 Hollywood Turf Cup. Earlier in 2014, he won the Grade 3 Stars N Stripes and $400,000 American St. Leger at Arlington.