WHO’S HOT
Encino’s wire-to-wire victory in the Grade 3 Lexington Stakes on Saturday at Keeneland earned him sufficient qualifying points to make the Kentucky Derby field following the defection of No More Time. The top 19 on the points list, in addition to Japan Road to the Derby points leader T O Password, gain a Derby berth.
If you can’t beat Wesley Ward – and that is almost literally true in April 2-year-old races at Keeneland – you might as well join the party.
Ward, dating to the April 2023 meet at Keeneland, has gone 7 for 15 in baby races, a record made even stronger by the fact he’s had multiple runners in some of the races. Already this April he has won three of the five 2-year-old races. Unless Ultima Grace blows the start from post 1 in Thursday’s second race, another 4 1/2-furlong tilt for 2-year-olds, she’ll win, too.
All the prep races have been run and the qualifying points doled out. Now, several connections have decisions to make before the field for Kentucky Derby 150 is set.
Those decisions have to be finalized by April 27 when entries close and post positions are assigned for the $5 million Kentucky Derby. The field is limited to 20 starters, but as many as 24 horses may enter, with four carded as also-eligibles. Last year, 23 horses were entered and after scratches 18 ultimately went to post.
There are few things acclaimed international jockey Frankie Dettori hasn’t accomplished in his career. He checked one off the list Saturday at Keeneland and is hoping for another in a few weeks at Churchill Downs.
Dettori won his first graded stakes race at Keeneland on Saturday, piloting Beaute Cachee to a front-running 25-1 upset in the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley. Dettori’s only previous stakes win at Keeneland, at any level, came when he was in town for the 2015 Breeders’ Cup and rode Sheikh of Sheikhs to a win in the Juvenile Dirt Sprint on the undercard.
The late-blooming Encino still has room for development as he eyes the spring classics, trainer Brad Cox and jockey Florent Geroux both said following the colt’s win in the Grade 3 Lexington Stakes on Saturday at Keeneland.
Encino, who has shipped from Keeneland to Cox’s base at Churchill Downs, set the pace in the Lexington and turned back The Wine Steward for a three-quarter-length win. The Godolphin homebred was making just his fourth career start, first on dirt, and first in a graded stakes race.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – After the front-loaded start to the Keeneland spring meet, a quieter second half of the meet begins with Wednesday’s eight-race card. The nominal feature is a $110,000 allowance on the turf, and conditions appear favorable for turf racing this week, after several inches of rain here forced many events off the grass last week.
Ehsaan has proven to be quite a useful claim for trainer Maria Bowersock, as he will go for his third win of the Tampa Bay Downs meet on Wednesday when he runs in a competitive $32,000 starter-allowance/optional-claiming race scheduled for 1 1/16 miles on the turf.
Resilience will try to add to the accomplishments of prominent owner and breeder Marty Wygod posthumously when he goes postward in the Kentucky Derby. The Wood Memorial winner is from one of the best families cultivated by Wygod, who died April 11 at Scripps Hospital in La Jolla, Calif., near his home in Rancho Santa Fe. He was 84.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Phil Serpe wants to leave no doubt that Leave No Trace is ready for a return to stakes company, so he has found the Grade 1 winner another allowance race in which to prove herself Thursday at Aqueduct.
Leave No Trace, who staved off retirement winning a second-level allowance race on March 17, heads a field of six going six furlongs in a third-level allowance that goes as race 2 on Thursday’s eight-race offering at Aqueduct as the second half of the 16-day spring meet commences.
