ARCADIA, Calif. – Trainer Gary Sherlock said that when he bought Uncle Lino as a yearling, he took a shot on a colt who needed to grow up.
“He needed a couple of things to go right, and it did,” Sherlock said.
That’s also an apt description for Sherlock, who nearly died 20 years ago.
Mor Spirit
Eskendereya – Im a Dixie Girl, by Dixie Union
($650,000 purchase by Bernard Schiappa and M. Petersen at 2015 Fasig-Tipton Florida sale of 2-year-olds in training)
Mor Spirit will attempt to stretch his winning streak to three graded stakes in California on Saturday in the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita. A Grade 1-winning juvenile who has won three times at a mile or longer, the Pennsylvania-bred ridgling has already outrun most of his immediate family in terms of class and distance.
My memory on this only goes back to the 1970s, but I do not remember a year when we have gotten to mid-March and the country’s four best 3-year-olds were unbeaten in 21 combined starts, with two of them having not been tested. Somebody with a better memory certainly can correct me, but this all seems unprecedented.
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Ten new names are among the 23 separately listed entries in the third pool in the 2016 Kentucky Derby Future Wager, which opens Friday at noon Eastern and runs concurrent this weekend with the lone futures pool offered on the 2016 Kentucky Oaks.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – There’s a good chance that Shagaf won’t be trainer Chad Brown’s only starter in the Grade 1, $1 million Wood Memorial at Aqueduct on April 9.
While Shagaf punched his ticket to the Wood Memorial by virtue of his victory in Saturday’s Grade 3 Gotham Stakes, Brown was heartened by what he saw from Flexibility on Sunday morning and from My Man Sam on Sunday afternoon, which could lead to one or both also aiming for the Wood Memorial.
Grade 3, $400,000 Gotham Stakes, 1 1/16 miles, Aqueduct, March 5, 2016
(50 Derby qualifying points for a win, 20 for second, 10 for third, 5 for fourth)
Winner: Shagaf, by Bernardini
Trainer: Chad Brown
Jockey: Irad Ortiz Jr.
Owner: Shadwell Stable
Beyer Speed Figure: 87
It’s amazing the perspective just one week can give you.
Last week at this time, we were appreciating, among other things, the very impressive stakes victories at Gulfstream Park by a pair of highly talented 3-year-old fillies – Cathryn Sophia and Catch a Glimpse. Cathryn Sophia’s demolition of her Davona Dale field, and Catch a Glimpse’s turn of foot in the Herecomesthebride Stakes were displays of high class, and still remain so.
After conferring with the horse’s owner, trainer Stanley Gold has decided to give Awesome Banner one more chance around two turns and will bring him back next Saturday in the Tampa Bay Derby. Awesome Banner tired badly after setting the pace, finishing far behind the undefeated Mohaymen, in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth.
