It was great to get our Louisiana string of horses back up north in the last week of March. We had planned on having a few horses run at Keeneland on the turf in April following the Fair Grounds meet, but the weather got very unsettled down there towards the beginning of the meet and we ended up just running one—A Bourbon for Toby—who ran very well to finish fifth in a Maiden Special Weight on April 13.
He was a little spotty on his turf debut through the race, so Brian Hernandez recommended a small pair of blinkers. We arranged to have him breeze in them and I was very pleased to see he worked extremely well. He’s a colt who has shown a lot of ability in the mornings and I really think that a long distance of ground on the turf is exactly what he wants.
One Nine Hundred finally broke through his maiden condition in extremely remarkable fashion. After having rather fluffed his lines on debut and got beaten a head by a stakes winner, he ran second to Colloquial in his next start, posting a 92 Beyer. He then broke his maiden under Jose Lezcano on March 29 and couldn’t have been any more impressive if he tried. He ran a 7 on the Ragozin sheets and paired his 92 Beyer.
On April 6, Griffin’s Wharf broke his maiden going a mile on the dirt at Laurel Park. He ran at the back of the field for half of the race and made up ground on the turn to take the lead and win by three and a half lengths for Rainbow’s End Racing Stable, Titletown Racing Stables, and West Paces Racing.
On April 17, Houlton won a mile contest on the dirt at Aqueduct by a neck. This was his second career win but first for Rainbow’s End Racing, who claimed the colt back in November. Big congratulations to Mike and Bob on their back-to-back wins.
Over the last few weeks, we’ve gotten some of the older turf sprint horses back in the barn. It’s great to see they’ve really filled out and developed physically, and I’m hopeful they’ll become real forces of nature over the summer. Felix is a horse who looks to be on an upward trajectory. I’d like to get him on firm ground and am looking forward to his return to the races after a very encouraging second place finish at the end of the Fair Grounds meet on March 2.
Down in Florida, OBS April came and went, and we picked up another few horses down there. It was a fun sale to work in terms of timing because it was actually Spring Break for Willow and Grace. My darling wife went on an eleven-day road trip going to Arkansas to cover the Apple Blossom, flying back to LaGuardia, but not actually leaving the airport because the children and Onjay were then delivered to her there so they could all jump on another plane and fly down to Tampa to join me, where I had been working the sales for a couple of days.
We stayed with Nick and Elizabeth Esler and had a really enjoyable time looking at the two-year-olds on the farms in Ocala. I worked the mornings at the sale, and in the afternoons, we went to the beach and to the springs. It was a wonderful week with family and friends, enjoying each other’s company and watching our children run riot together.
Back in New York, we’ve had some good weather and turf racing. The last two weeks of April, our turf horses ran well without winning, but I’m expecting to see a good few of them take a big step forward heading into Triple Crown season.
This is always a really exciting time of the year with the two-year-olds beginning to come in and the older horses really hitting their stride.
That’s a quick catch-up on April. Look for a follow-up blog covering the month of May and Belmont Stakes week at Saratoga sometime next week.
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