Triple Crown Fever

May always brings the start of Triple Crown fever with the Derby being run on the first Saturday in May, and what a fantastic race this year’s addition was. As we’ve gone through the three legs of the Triple Crown, it’s become very apparent that there are three above average colts amongst the three-year-old group, and one of them is just better than the other two. I think that Mike McCarthy has been admirable in running Journalism in all three of the Triple Crown races, and he’s acquitted himself fantastically picking up a Preakness. But Sovereignty is just a bigger, better, stronger individual.

May started off in really good fashion with longtime friends and clients Anthony and Patty Warrender’s homebred Felix winning a Two Other Than at Aqueduct on May 4, meaning that Derby Weekend was celebrated in great fashion in their household.

The following Thursday, Ricardo Santana gave Twenty Four Mamba an absolutely fantastic ice-cold ride in behind horses on dirt and first off the claim for Flying P Stable. This really cool six-year-old dirt sprinting gelding seems to be rounding back into some of his very better form.

That same afternoon, Donegal Momentum and Son of a Birch took each other on and ran second and third in the turf mile Three Other Than. Donegal Momentum was probably a victim of his own trainer and pilot deciding to take on the pacemaker as early as possible. That set the race up for him ending up just being beaten on the wire, but still running extremely well.

Preakness weekend was a relatively quiet weekend for the barn, but as we headed into the last part of May, things picked up.

Over the last year, we’ve learned a lot about Miss Bourbon. She’s a turf sprinter with a short closing kick. Has to be ridden with a great deal of patience, as she only has a half a furlong finish to her races. But she ran very well to finish third, beaten by half a length on May 24.

I was very pleased with Pookie‘s comeback. Pookie was on a little bit of a holding pattern after the three-year-old filly Allowance was rained off the turf. We then had her run against the colts and that rained off the turf as well. So a tough ask on May 25 for her to have to come back against older fillies and mares. She ran extremely well to finish fourth, beaten by two and a half lengths, and will point towards a stake at Monmouth Park for straight three-year-old fillies at the end of June.

The following day, Identity Crisis made his career debut for the barn. An unraced four-year-old New York-bred by Blame, he ran very well to finish third first time out and will stretch out in time. We will sprint him again this weekend as there is no suitable long race on the grass for him.

June brought around the Belmont Racing Festival in Saratoga, and what a wonderful week it was. Barring the massive rainstorm on Friday night, it was a truly spectacular week of racing and I was delighted to see that our horses all showed up and ran extremely well through the week.

It started with first off the claim Outsource—who had never run on grass—being given a last-to-first ride under masterful John Velasquez to pay $115 for wonderful clients Rainbow’s End Racing. This is a very exciting son of Honor A.P. who is three-years-old and quite clearly relished a trip on the turf compared to his previous dirt starts. He will now point towards the Rick Violet stakes in the middle of July back up at Saratoga.

On the second day of the Belmont Festival, Donegal Momentum went gate to wire to win the Gr. 3 Poker. This is a horse that we’ve always held in the very highest of regards, and he finally got his correct conditions—firm ground and a flat mile around a track that he’d already won over. He was fantastically impressive in his victory over some very accomplished older horses. As a horse that’s only just turned four, he has an enormous amount of upside and I’m very much looking forward to target him towards the Gr. 1 Four Star Dave during the second half of the meet in Saratoga.

Other horses that acquitted themselves really well that week were Factually Correct, who ended up in a race that wasn’t ideal being six and a half furlongs. He ran fantastically well to finish third, beat by a half-length. Paula’s a Star also ran incredibly well in her first start off of a disappointing ship down to Laurel. She ran a very competitive version of the Jersey Girl, which was far more on paper than just the listed quality that the race was given. To finish fourth, beaten by two lengths, I thought was an excellent way to set up her summer moving forward.

We’ve had a relatively quiet middle of June, but things will begin to heat up again towards the second half with plenty of entries to come. And then we will head on back north to Saratoga for the duration of the now eight and a half weeks of the summer meet.