WHO’S HOT

Country House, second in the Risen Star on Saturday, and Galilean, who romped in the California Cup Derby on Monday and is now headed for open stakes racing, are the two newcomers to this week’s Derby Watch top 20. Country House is 20-1 on the line set by Mike Watchmaker, Daily Racing Form’s national handicapper, for the May 4 Kentucky Derby. Galilean is 30-1. War of Will, the Risen Star winner, saw his odds cut from 12-1 last week to 10-1, making him the co-fourth choice with Instagrand.

WHO’S NOT

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. -- Trainer Larry Jones suspected Super Steed would be double-digit odds for the Grade 3, $500,000 Southwest Stakes on Monday at Oaklawn, but he was not prepared for what he saw on the infield tote board walking up for the race with his staff.

“I said, ‘Man, I don’t believe it,’ ” Jones recalled Tuesday.

Super Steed ended up going off at 62-1 in the Southwest, and won the race with a sweeping, four-wide move on the final turn. He paid $126.60.

In a surprising development, trainer Bob Baffert on Tuesday said there is a very good chance his top two Kentucky Derby prospects, Game Winner and Improbable, will make their 3-year-old debuts against one another in the Grade 2, $500,000 San Felipe Stakes on March 9 at Santa Anita.

“I have a feeling they’ll both be in there,” Baffert said. “It might be Clemson vs. Alabama.”

Grade 2, $400,000 Risen Star, 1 1/16 miles, Fair Grounds, Feb. 16, 2019
(50 Derby qualifying points for a win, 20 for second, 10 for third, 5 for fourth)

Winner: War of Will, by War Front
Trainer: Mark Casse
Jockey: Tyler Gaffalione
Owner: Gary Barber
Beyer Speed Figure: 92

Network Effect, the runner-up in two graded stakes as a juvenile and a member of Daily Racing Form’s first installment of Derby Watch, has been taken off the Triple Crown trail due to “a minor setback,” trainer Chad Brown said Sunday.

“I’m going to back off the horse a little bit,” Brown said by phone from South Florida. “It’s a minor setback. Hopefully, I’ll have him in good shape for the summer.

“It’s disappointing. We were looking to make the Derby with him. It wasn’t meant to be.”

Brown said the horse will remain in his barn at Palm Meadows.

War of Will’s decisive victory in Saturday’s Risen Star Stakes at Fair Grounds was a good example of how hot takes immediately after a race might not age very well.

I understand why there was some gushing over War of Will in the time between his gallop-out and when the last patron left the Fair Grounds dining room. I mean, War of Will scored by just more than two lengths, which was his third straight decisive victory since moving to dirt last fall, and he did so after prompting a pace that otherwise fell completely apart.

Two stakes at Tokyo Racecourse in Japan on Sunday – the Grade 1 February Stakes for older horses and the Hyacinth Stakes for 3-year-olds – could produce runners for two of the biggest races in the United States later this year.

The winner of the $1.76 million February Stakes at a mile will receive a fees-paid berth in the Breeders’ Cup Classic at Santa Anita on Nov. 2, if nominated to the Breeders’ Cup program.

From an historical perspective, it is appropriate that Saturday’s $100,000 El Camino Real Derby at Golden Gate Fields awards its winner a berth in the Preakness Stakes. Three consecutive Preakness winners – Gate Dancer (1984), Tank’s Prospect (1985), and Snow Chief (1986) – ran in the El Camino Real Derby, and Tabasco Cat scored an El Camino-Preakness double in 1994.

ARCADIA, Calif. – Twice in the last four years and five times since 1996 Bob Baffert has trained the winner of the Kentucky Derby.

He has done it with horses who were brilliant at 2 and trained on like Silver Charm; a wiry colt who needed plenty of racing to find his best form in Real Quiet; a late acquisition like War Emblem; a champion at 2 who repeated at 3 in American Pharoah; and, in Justify last year, a horse who at this point in the calendar hadn’t even started.

Two of them, American Pharoah and Justify, went on to sweep the Triple Crown.

Game WinnerCandy Ride-Indyan Giving, by A.P. Indy

Bred in Kentucky by Summer Wind Farm ($110,000 Keeneland September yearling purchase by Ben Glass, agent)