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)

WHO’S HOT

Grade 3, $250,000 Sam Davis Stakes, 1 1/16 miles, Tampa Bay Downs, Feb. 9, 2019

(10 Derby qualifying points for a win, 4 for second, 2 for third, 1 for fourth)

Winner: Well Defined, by With Distinction
Trainer: Kathleen O’Connell
Jockey: Pablo Morales
Owner: Stonehedge LLC
Beyer Speed Figure: 93

The mutuel field, the 24th or “all others” option, closed as the favorite over Game Winner after three days of betting into Pool 2 of the 2019 Kentucky Derby Future Wager. The pool opened Friday at noon Eastern and ran through 6 p.m. Sunday.

The field closed at 5-2, followed by Game Winner (5-1), Hidden Scroll (7-1), Improbable (7-1), Instagrand (10-1), and War of Will (17-1). The lowest $2 exacta will-pay is Game Winner over Improbable (3-9), worth $52.40.

Hidden Scroll, a runaway winner of his debut on Jan. 26 at Gulfstream Park, and Code of Honor, runner-up in last year’s Champagne Stakes, are among the 3-year-olds pointing for the Grade 2, $350,000 Fountain of Youth Stakes on March 2 at Gulfstream, their trainers said Thursday.

Hidden Scroll dazzled on the Pegasus undercard, earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 104. On Thursday trainer Bill Mott said “we’re taking a serious look at the Fountain of Youth” with the son of Hard Spun.