Trainers have said their 3-year-olds might be better suited to a shorter distance or a later date. In some cases, that might actually be true. It also might be true that they want no part of Essential Quality, now best-priced in Las Vegas futures as a 3-1 favorite. It could be that horsemen are conceding that this maturing crop of 2018 foals is thin.
Concert Tour was the latest big defection. Bob Baffert decided after a third-place finish in the Arkansas Derby that Gary and Mary West’s homebred by Street Sense was not training up to a level that would be ready for the prime time of Churchill Downs. The Preakness beckons for him instead.
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And now for something completely different. Half the year even more in 2020 this story has been about Kentucky Derby futures. This week and this week only it is about the Kentucky Oaks.
For 54½ hours, starting at noon ET Friday and ending at 6:30 p.m. Sunday, American bettors have their only legal chance to get early action on the 3-year-old fillies that will race April 30. This is the week actually more like the half-week when Churchill Downs makes book on its only scheduled Oaks futures. It will run almost concurrently with its fourth pari-mutuel pool for the Kentucky Derby. (The Derby pool goes until Sunday at 6 p.m. EST, a half-hour before the Oaks pool closes.)
Guide to Saturday s two 2021 Kentucky Derby preps
Guide to Saturday s two 2021 Kentucky Derby preps Photo:
Liz Lamont / Eclipse Sportswire
Moments after
Greatest Honour drew off Jan. 30 to win the Holy Bull Stakes (G3), trainer Shug McGaughey remarked that “the pressure begins now.”
That pressure continues Saturday at Gulfstream Park, where Greatest Honour leads a field of 10 into the $300,000
Fountain of Youth Stakes (G2). Post time for the 1 1/16-mile event is scheduled for 6:10 p.m. EST. He ran awfully well, he’s trained well since then, so this is just another step, McGaughey told Carolyn Greer this week in
The Fountain of Youth pays its winner 50 Kentucky Derby points, enough to essentially clinch a spot in the starting gates for the First Saturday in May. McGaughey is no stranger to using the race as a springboard to Churchill Downs.
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