Hidden Scroll remains on the Kentucky Derby trail, Mucho is off it, and Country House will make his next start in the Louisiana Derby, trainer Bill Mott said Monday as he evaluated a weekend where two of those horses ran and one worked.

Hidden Scroll, the beaten favorite after setting a wicked pace in the Fountain of Youth on Saturday at Gulfstream Park, will be considered for the Grade 1, $1 million Florida Derby on March 30 or races the following week, including the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct and Grade 2, $1 million Blue Grass at Keeneland.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Easy Shot’s status for the 2019 Triple Crown scene will be determined in a top-class running of the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita on Saturday.

The $500,000 San Felipe at 1 1/16 miles is expected to be led by Game Winner, the champion 2-year-old male of 2018, and Improbable, who won the Grade 1 Los Alamitos Futurity in December in his last start.

Monday, Game Winner worked five furlongs in 1:00.60, while Improbable went the same distance in 59.60 seconds.

The San Felipe will be by far the toughest race of Easy Shot’s career.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Some people might have been troubled by Signalman’s seventh-place finish in Saturday’s Grade 2 Fountain of Youth, but his trainer Ken McPeek wasn’t one of them.

McPeek couldn’t have been more upbeat or confident in his Grade 2-winning Kentucky Derby hopeful when looking back on the effort the following day.

If ever a race lent credence to the old sports saying credited to coach Lou Holtz that, “You’re never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you’re never as bad as they say when you lose,” it was Saturday’s Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Code of Honor, the winner of the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth Stakes on Saturday at Gulfstream Park, came out of the race well and will make his next start in either the Grade 1, $1 million Florida Derby at Gulfstream on March 30 or the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial at Aqueduct one week later, trainer Shug McGaughey said Sunday morning at Gulfstream.

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – With just 63 days until the Kentucky Derby, those in the Fountain of Youth Stakes on Saturday at Gulfstream Park knew what was at stake as race time neared.

“Acid test time,” Mark Hennig, the trainer of Bourbon War, said as he walked toward the paddock.

A few minutes earlier, asked how he was doing, Garrett O’Rourke, the general manager of Juddmonte Farms, whose Hidden Scroll would go off the favorite, replied, “Ask me in an hour.”

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Disappointment was etched on Bill Mott’s face, but not too deep. He knows the racing game all too well.

“That’s history,” the Hall of Fame trainer calmly surmised late Saturday afternoon following the defeat of Hidden Scroll, the 6-5 favorite in the 72nd Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream Park.

Gulfstream Park | Race 13 | Post Time 5:32 p.m. (ET) | Go to the TimeformUS PPs

Not already a TimeformUS member? Sign up now

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – A little more than a week after Hidden Scroll announced his presence to the world with a romping 14-length debut victory at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 26, his Hall of Fame trainer, Bill Mott, was musing that he was “going to ruin my reputation.”

“Can’t win first time. Can’t win the Derby,” he said, laughing.

Hidden Scroll completed the first half of that parlay. He’ll try to continue toward the second half on Saturday at Gulfstream in the $400,000 Fountain of Youth Stakes, for which he is the morning-line favorite.

DELRAY BEACH, Fla. – They have names like Boomerang and Big Loop, Comet and Corkscrew, Tornado and Velocity. The road to the Kentucky Derby has so many twists and turns, it’s like a roller-coaster ride. So, perhaps the most-appropriate horse for this time of the year is one named for the manufacturer of roller coasters bearing those monikers.