[bc_video_id:316886:]NEW ORLEANS – Vicar’s in Trouble is a Louisiana-bred by Into Mischief who cost $8,000 at a yearling auction, and that’s exactly how he looks. His hair coat doesn’t glow. He’s on the light side. And, quite frankly, the colt is tiny: He’ll be a full head shorter than brutes like Gold Hawk when he lines up in the starting gate here Saturday for the Risen Star Stakes.
“He puffs up when he gets out on the track, though,” assistant trainer Joe Sharp said.
Rebranded’s value went up earlier this week without him even lifting a hoof. The probable favorite for the $120,000 Mine That Bird Derby at Sunland Park on Saturday, he was part of a Saratoga maiden race that ended up producing the top two finishers in Monday’s Grade 3, $300,000 Southwest at Oaklawn Park.
“After they ran the Southwest the other day, his stock rose,” said Justin Evans, who trains Rebranded for owner Tony Pennington.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The Fountain of Youth Stakes on Saturday at Gulfstream Park is worth $400,000, and it’s a Grade 2 event – all that certainly worthwhile in and of itself. But the race carries even more importance in regard to the Kentucky Derby. It’s like having jumbo stone crabs and key lime pie.
Emmett Park was one of only six horses with more than one win among the 16 3-year-olds entered in Saturday’s Risen Star, but that meant nothing under the conditions of the race.
In the event the Risen Star overfills, which it did, preference is given to entrants by lifetime earnings, not wins, and Emmett Park’s 2 for 2 record at Turfway Park this winter had earned him a mere $27,300.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Two days after winning last year’s Kentucky Derby with Orb, trainer Shug McGaughey was pulling into the parking lot of the place where he gets his eyeglasses near his home on Long Island, N.Y., when the phone rang. It was his good friend, Hall of Fame football coach Bill Parcells.
“That’s just the bait,” Parcells, a two-time winner of the Super Bowl, told McGaughey.
McGaughey already knew it. Like the fish McGaughey likes to catch on his off days, he was hooked.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - The Fountain of Youth is not the only race on Saturday’s outstanding program likely to have Florida Derby and perhaps Kentucky Derby implications. The sixth race on the card, a 1 1/16-mile optional-claiming event, drew an outstanding field of 10 3-year-olds, many of whom have Derby aspirations. Among that group are the Todd Pletcher-trained pair of Constitution and Matterhorn as well as Tonalist, Wicked Strong, and Mexikoma.
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. - Honor Code breezed an easy half-mile in 49.55 seconds at Gulfstream on Wednesday. The work was the second for Honor Code since he shipped here from Payson Park after missing some training time due to bruised ankles earlier this winter.
NEW ORLEANS – Bond Holder will be scratched from the Risen Star Stakes on Saturday at Fair Grounds due to body soreness caused by a rough flight from Los Angeles to New Orleans, trainer Doug O’Neill said Wednesday.
Bond Holder would have been among the favorites in the Grade 2, $400,000 Risen Star. In September, he won the Grade 1 FrontRunner Stakes, subsequently finishing fourth, beaten about three lengths, in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, and fourth, beaten about nine lengths, in the Dec. 14 CashCall Futurity, Bond Holder’s most recent race.
