Grade 3, $147,351 Robert Lewis Stakes, 1 1/16 miles, Santa Anita, Feb. 2, 2019
(10 Derby qualifying points for a win, 4 for second, 2 for third, 1 for fourth)
Winner: Mucho Gusto, by Mucho Macho Man
Trainer: Bob Baffert
Jockey: Joe Talamo
Owner: Michael Lund Petersen
Beyer Speed Figure: 90
Everyone would like it to be early May, with much better weather everywhere, baseball in full swing, and all the pieces of the Kentucky Derby puzzle fitted together.
Instead, it’s early February. The weather isn’t great, at least in a lot of places. We don’t know something as basic as which teams two of baseballs brightest, youngest stars are going to play for, and the Derby puzzle pieces aren’t even all out on the table yet.
Gulfstream Park | Race 11 | Post Time 5:13 p.m. (ET) | Go to the TimeformUS PPs
There is much to digest in analyzing the major Kentucky Derby prep races across the country on Saturday, including the shuffling of mounts among leading jockeys.
Seven of the 10 horses in Gulfstream Park’s Holy Bull, for example, are experiencing rider changes, as jockeys and their agents go in search of stakes opportunities, not only for the moment, but also in the weeks and months to come, advancing toward the Kentucky Derby.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Handicappers will have to grapple with questions regarding class, distance, and fitness when deciphering whom to wager on in Saturday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct.
The seven-horse field of 3-year-olds assembled for the Withers, contested at 1 1/8 miles, includes two horses obtained via the claim box for $50,000, one bought at auction for $900,000, two horses who have not run in at least 10 weeks, one who has done his best work on synthetic, and another who hasn’t won beyond 5 1/2 furlongs.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Trainer Rudy Rodriguez hopes all the talk about Brady this weekend won’t be limited to the Super Bowl.
On Saturday, Rodriguez will send out Not That Brady against six rivals in the Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct. At 1 1/8 miles, the Withers should be a good measure of a horse’s ability to get a distance of ground and whether or not to continue down the path to the Kentucky Derby, at 1 1/4 miles. The Withers offers 17 Derby qualifying points to its top four finishers (10-4-2-1).
Gray Attempt won the $150,000 Smarty Jones wire to wire last week at Oaklawn Park, but it might be a mistake to brand the 3-year-old as one-dimensional. He was stretching out from six furlongs to a mile for a race that ended at the sixteenth pole and he drew the widest gate in circumstances that dictated tactics, trainer Jinks Fires said.
“We had the eight post and if you don’t go on from there, you could wind up getting hung wide all the way around the first turn,” Fires said.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Robert “Butch” Reid told jockey Jose Ortiz he’d buy him lunch if he could hold the freakishly fast Maximus Mischief to a half-mile in 49 seconds over the packed down, sealed, but still muddy racetrack here Monday morning in his all-important final breeze before Saturday’s Grade 2 Holy Bull.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – For the second time in a week, a major contender has been withdrawn from consideration for Saturday’s Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct.
Le General, who has won two New York-bred races by a combined 10 lengths, came out of his last workout with a sore suspensory in his right foreleg, according to majority owner Jeffrey Kallenberg.
On Jan. 16, Le General worked five furlongs in 1:04.08 over a deep Aqueduct main track.
ARCADIA, Calif. – The Grade 3 Robert Lewis Stakes at Santa Anita on Saturday will play a pivotal role in the short-term future of Gum Tree Lane, the promising winner of a maiden race at Los Alamitos in December.
Owned by Michael House and trained by Phil D’Amato, Gum Tree Lane will make his stakes debut in the $150,000 Lewis at 1 1/16 miles. D’Amato chose the Lewis over a first-condition allowance race with an $80,000 claiming option at a mile on Thursday.
