Work All Week returns with major class edge in Aristides
RACE REPLAY IS NOT AVAILABLE
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – In comparison to what looms a week later with the Belmont Stakes, this Saturday doesn’t necessarily qualify as a big day for racing in America. But for Midwest Thoroughbreds and trainer Roger Brueggemann, it’s a huge day.
Within the span of some 30 minutes Saturday, Work All Week and The Pizza Man will make their returns to action for Midwest and Brueggemann in back-to-back stakes at Churchill Downs.
Work All Week, the Eclipse Award-winning sprinter in 2014, will be heavily favored in the Grade 3, $100,000 Aristides, while The Pizza Man, a stakes-seasoned earner of more than $800,000, is part of a competitive field of older turf horses in the $65,000 Opening Verse.
For Brueggemann, it’s a day long in coming.
“We would’ve had them back sooner, but the weather was so bad at Oaklawn Park this winter that we got backed up on our training,” said Brueggemann.
Work All Week capped his championship season at Santa Anita by winning the Nov. 1 Breeders’ Cup Sprint, running his remarkable career record on dirt to 10 for 10. He has been training forwardly at the Trackside training center a few miles from Churchill, although Brueggemann said he has yet to map out a schedule that he hopes will result in a return to the BC Sprint at Keeneland in late October.
“I just wanted to get him ready for this,” said Brueggemann. “All I know is he’s really doing good. I’m also really happy we got the outside post.”
Work All Week will break from post 7 in a field of seven in the 27th running of the six-furlong Aristides, which is carded as the eighth of 10 Saturday races. First post is 12:45 p.m. Eastern, with the Aristides set for 4:18.
The Pizza Man appears to have a more difficult assignment when facing the likes of Departing and Regally Ready in the Opening Verse (race 9, post 4:49), a 1 1/16-mile turf race that drew a field of 10, although Brueggemann is quietly confident in the hard-knocking veteran, who has won 12 of 20 career starts.
“He’ll be all right in there,” he said.
Midwest, the nom de course of Richard and Karen Papiese, has been the leading owner in wins on this continent every year since 2010 and is well on its way to a sixth straight title as the clear leader atop the 2015 standings. Although Midwest wins the vast majority of its races with non-stakes horses, its accomplishments with Work All Week and The Pizza Man are extraordinary in the aspect that both are 6-year-old geldings bred by the Papieses in their home state of Illinois.
Brueggemann said he expects the Papieses will be on hand Saturday.
Florent Geroux has the mount on both Midwest horses.
Aristides (race 8)
Key contenders
Work All Week (Last 3 Beyers: 105-100-96)
* The main question obviously is whether he’s ready to win right off the bench, but circumstances seem to favor him. He brings a huge class edge and a steady work slate into this, and the outside post should give Geroux a free hand, just as he had in winning the Phoenix and BC Sprint last fall.
Alsvid (Last 3 Beyers: 105-95-90)
* Rail-drawn gelding could prove the chief threat to Work All Week after coming to peak form for Chris Hartman with a career-high Beyer in his Count Fleet Sprint Handicap victory last month at Oaklawn Park.
Opening Verse (race 9)
KEY CONTENDERS
The Pizza Man (Last 3 Beyers: 97-99-89)
* He’s been known to reel off victory after victory, including a five-race streak that culminated in the American St. Leger last August. After being freshened, he’s liable to show more zip than he did when ending his 5-year-old campaign on a so-so note.
Departing (Last 3 Beyers: 85-97-98)
* Earner of nearly $1.6 million will be making his grass debut following a series of strong works in what shapes up as a very interesting comeback for Al Stall Jr., who is as intrigued as anyone by what possibilities are in store with the shift to the turf.
Commanding Curve back in allowance
Earlier Saturday, Commanding Curve will make his first start in more than nine months when facing five others in race 2, a first-level allowance at 1 1/16 miles. In by far the most notable effort of his 10-race career, Commanding Curve ran second at 37-1 behind California Chrome in the 2014 Kentucky Derby. The colt is owned by West Point Thoroughbreds and trained by Dallas Stewart.
“We have deliberately not pushed him to start until now because so many of the big races for older horses are later in the year,” said West Point spokesman Jeff Lifson.