NEW ORLEANS – The trainer Brad Cox made his Kentucky Derby debut in 2021, when he ran two horses. In 2022, Cox got three colts into the Derby. This year, Cox might field an entire battalion.
Of the 15 races run outside California offering qualifying points toward the 2023 Derby, Cox has finished first or second – even first and second – in nine. Five of his horses are among the 20 in Daily Racing Form’s most recent Derby Watch; others are knocking at that door.
The well-bred Wadsworth has hit his stride at Turfway Park, with a Saturday night allowance-level score his second straight win on the Tapeta. Trainer Brad Cox said he and owner-breeder Godolphin are “definitely considering” Turfway’s upcoming Kentucky Derby points races for the gelding.
Hit Show
Candy Ride – Actress, by Tapit
Bred in Kentucky by Gary and Mary West
Hit Show has won 3 of 4 career starts, with his latest effort, a 5 1/2-length victory in the Grade 3 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct, catapulting him up the Derby Watch list. Gary and Mary West’s homebred son of perennial leading sire Candy Ride brings a solid two-turn pedigree to further challenges on the Derby trail.
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Hit Show, the Grade 3 Withers winner, hit the road Wednesday and will do his training at Fair Grounds for his next start, which is still likely to occur in the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial on April 8 at Aqueduct.
Dustin Dugas, the Belmont Park-based assistant to trainer Brad Cox, said owner Gary West expressed a preference not to stay in New York for the next two months and train over the deep Belmont training track.
Hit Show was stabled at Oaklawn Park before shipping to New York for the Withers, which he won by 5 1/2 lengths.
NEW ORLEANS – By the time you read this, Steve Asmussen might have sent out his 10,000th North American winner. No one ever has done this, obviously, as Asmussen, 57, is the all-time North American leader in training wins, 9,997 through Tuesday.
Among active trainers, Jerry Hollendorfer, 76, has the next-highest total, 7,757. Todd Pletcher, who is 55, has roughly half the number of Asmussen wins, while 87-year-old D. Wayne Lukas is closing on 5,000 career winners. In other words, it’s not even close.
While Mark Casse will be represented Saturday by Determinedly in the Risen Star at Fair Grounds, the Hall of Fame trainer has updates on the two 3-year-olds he ran last Saturday in the Sam F. Davis Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs.
Classic Car Wash “was a pretty good third” behind Litigate and Groveland in the Sam Davis, which likely will get him a return trip to Oldsmar, Fla., for the Tampa Bay Derby on March 11, Casse said.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Skinner, Grade 1-placed as a maiden 2-year-old last summer, jumped into the Derby picture with an emphatic maiden win Feb. 12 at Santa Anita, his first start since October. Skinner won the mile race by more than three lengths with a noteworthy 95 Beyer Speed Figure.
John Shirreffs, who trains the son of Curlin for owners Lee and Susan Searing, said Skinner was immature last season.
“In the beginning, everything was new to him,” he said. “He wasn’t really established and secure in his position, in his training.”
ARCADIA, Calif. – Practical Move, upset winner of the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Futurity, will launch his 3-year-old campaign in the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes on March 4 at Santa Anita, skipping the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes on Feb. 28 at Oaklawn Park, trainer Tim Yakteen confirmed.
“You prefer to run out of your backyard,” Yakteen said Saturday at Santa Anita, where Practical Move smoked five furlongs in 59 seconds, the day’s fastest five-furlong work. It was a super work over the Santa Anita surface he will race over in his comeback
According to the betting public participating in Pool 4 of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager, which closed Sunday night, trainer Tom Amoss’s best hope for the 2023 Derby runs not in the Risen Star Stakes on Saturday at Fair Grounds but in the filly-restricted Rachel Alexandra.
Hoosier Philly, the unbeaten 3-year-old filly trained by Amoss, makes her season’s debut in the Rachel Alexandra after attracting surprising support in the latest future pool, where she closed at 11-1. Only champion 2-year-old male Forte at 8-1 was a shorter price among individual horses.
