ARCADIA, Calif. – Gray Magician is being rested at a Kentucky farm after finishing last of 19 in the Kentucky Derby last Saturday.
Trainer Peter Miller said Gray Magician bled “a little bit” in the Kentucky Derby. Sent off at 33-1, Gray Magician was 14th on the backstretch and as close as 13th on the turn before fading through the stretch on a sloppy and sealed racetrack.
“I don’t think he’ll be seeing a wet track again,” Miller said. “His two worse races were on sloppy tracks.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Omaha Beach, who was withdrawn from the Kentucky Derby three days before the race after being diagnosed with an entrapped epiglottis, could return to trainer Richard Mandella’s stable at Santa Anita as early as this weekend.
Mandella said Wednesday that Omaha Beach is being given a rest at WinStar Farm in Kentucky. Mandella said he has secured a reservation on a horse flight Sunday and may have Omaha Beach shipped west this weekend, depending on the colt’s condition.
Q. What is your opinion about the DQ in the 2019 Derby? Should this lead to talk about standardized rules in racing and maybe a commissioner?
—Dwight Shellman
A. I am glad you asked this question because I feel strongly about the issue: Maximum Security should not have been disqualified.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – They were slogging back around the clubhouse turn headed home with their muddy, untacked longshot, already thrilled with his gallant runner-up effort in the Kentucky Derby, when Churchill Downs track announcer Travis Stone’s voice came over the public address system: “Hold all tickets. There’s a rider’s objection in this race, and it concerns the top two finishers.”
And so they turned back around to wait near the finish wire. Just in case.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Jockey Flavien Prat was 23 in 2016 when he attended his first Kentucky Derby and watched Nyquist win.
Earlier that day, Prat won the Grade 1 Humana Distaff on Taris and was done for the afternoon by post time for the Kentucky Derby. In those days, Prat, who was born and raised in France, was more fascinated by the Breeders’ Cup series and its wide array of races than he was by the Kentucky Derby.
“As a European rider, for us it’s more about the Breeders’ Cup,” he said Sunday at Santa Anita.
This racing fan learned to live with the moral inequities of race disqualifications long ago. In fact, it happened on May 30, 1967, when Manny Ycaza turned left with Dr. Fager out of the gate in the Jersey Derby, went on to win by 6 1/2 lengths, and was mercilessly disqualified by the Garden State stewards. As Pike Bishop warned his young Wild Bunch compatriot, “Either you learn to live with it, or we’ll leave you here.”
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Gary West, the owner of Maximum Security, said Sunday he wants to appeal the stewards’ decision to disqualify his horse from first in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, but based on Kentucky regulations, he may have to take it to federal court for it to be heard.
The overnight rating for the Kentucky Derby broadcast on NBC on Saturday was the highest since 1992 and a 20 percent jump over last year’s number, according to NBC.
The overnight rating for the broadcast running from 5 p.m. Eastern until approximately 7:30 was a 10.9 with a 25 share, according to NBC. The rating peaked at 11.9 with a 27 share during the race, NBC said. The 1992 rating was also a 10.9.
Last year, the Derby broadcast posted a 9.1 rating and a 21 share, a drop of 17 percent from the 2017 broadcast.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Here are the top five finishers, with available mutuel prices from the 145th Kentucky Derby on Saturday at Churchill Downs in which Maximum Security was disqualified from first and placed 17th for interference:
Top 5 order of finish, $2 mutuels
20 - Country House - $132.40/$56.60/$24.60
13 - Code of Honor - $15.20/$9.80
8 - Tacitus - $5.60
5 - Improbable
16 - Game Winner
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – The Kentucky Derby had been run for 144 years before Saturday, the results ranging from tour de forces by all-time greats, and upsets by improbable longshots, on days when the sun shined bright on the old Kentucky home, and when it rained as though Noah’s Ark would come sailing down the stretch.
