Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Sunny Ridge sharp for Classic
Just one month into spring, this already has been an outstanding year for New Jersey-breds.
Irish War Cry has won the Wood Memorial and Holy Bull Stakes and is a leading contender for the Kentucky Derby. The old warrior Green Gratto won the Grade 1 Carter on the Wood undercard. And on Saturday, Sunny Ridge will aim for his third consecutive stakes victory in the $1.25 million Charles Town Classic.
A Holy Bull gelding bred and owned by Dennis Drazin – the head of Darby Development, which operates Monmouth Park – Sunny Ridge is back on track after a complicated 3-year-old campaign in which he missed the middle part of the year. Still, his win in the Withers Stakes at Aqueduct and his third in the Haskell Invitational at Monmouth were enough for him to recently be voted the New Jersey-bred Horse of the Year for 2016.
Sunny Ridge came into the Haskell off a layoff of nearly five months due to a muscle pull in his hind end. He finished a brave third to Exaggerator over a sloppy track but may have paid a price for the big effort in his final three starts of the year, according to trainer Jason Servis.
“The Haskell may have gotten to him for a few races,” Servis said. “It may have weakened him for a while. I was worried about that going into the race.”
Sunny Ridge seems to just now be realizing the potential he has hinted at throughout his career. He comes into the Grade 2 Classic off back-to-back wins in the Jazil and Stymie stakes over Aqueduct’s inner track.
“He’s doing great now,” Servis said. “I don’t think he’s an inner-track specialist, but he sure has run good there.”
While the turns of the onemile inner track are not sweeping, they aren’t as tight as the bends of the Charles Town oval. Sunny Ridge did, however, finish second by a neck to Exaggerator in the $1 million Delta Downs Jackpot as a 2-year-old. The tracks at Delta and Charles Town are both six furlongs.
“He’s a big guy, but he handled the track at Delta real well, and our thinking is that he’ll like the tight turns,” Servis said. “Of course, it’s a lot of money, too.”
Sunny Ridge will have a rooting section at Charles Town on Saturday since that’s where Servis was born and raised. His father, Joe, a former jockey, manager of the Jockeys’ Guild, and a steward for more than two decades at Charles Town, is a member of the track’s Hall of Fame and lives in town with his wife, Delores, and Servis’s sister, Jodie. All three will be on hand Saturday.
Drazin was one of the first owners to support Jason Servis when, after years of galloping horses in the morning and working as a valet in the jockeys’ room in the afternoon, he began training in 2001. Servis’s first stakes win as a trainer came in the 2002 Oceanport Stakes with Tempest Fugit, a horse Drazin claimed for $75,000.
Now, 15 years later, Sunny Ridge has developed into the best horse Drazin and Servis have had together, with five wins from 13 starts and $833,000 in earnings. And since Sunny Ridge is a gelding, this story hopefully has a long way to go.
Page McKenney awaits Lyman
Page McKenney, who was under consideration for the Charles Town Classic, will skip that race and instead be pointed to the $100,000 Lyman Stakes at Parx Racing on April 29.
Page McKenney came out of a March 26 workout at Pimlico Race Course with a bruised heel on his right front hoof. The injury forced him to miss some training. The Pimlico track also was closed for repairs from April 10-12.
Between the injury and the track closure, he missed too much training time to be ready for the Classic, according to trainer Mary Eppler.
“We thought he was going to pop an abscess, but he didn’t,” Eppler said. “The heel was just sensitive to the touch. The good news is that while we were treating his foot, we had him ultrasounded, and everything came back good. The left tendon he hurt last year is perfect.”
Eppler was pleased with Page McKenney’s five-furlong workout last Saturday and plans to work him again this weekend for the Lyman, a seven-furlong race for Pennsylvania-breds. Since Page McKenney is Pennsylvania-sired, he will run for a purse of $125,000.
“It’s not his perfect distance, but he’s always run well at Parx, and it’s a good place to start him back,” Eppler said.
Page McKenney, 7, hasn’t raced at Parx since September 2015 but has a 7-4-2-1 record at the track, with earnings of $173,000.
Page McKenney finished second to Stanford in last year’s Charles Town Classic and was third to Moreno in 2015. Overall, he is 17 for 46 with more than $1.4 million in earnings.
Ocasio wins without bug
Luis Ocasio, the Eclipse Award-winning apprentice rider of 2016, won with his first mount as a journeyman at Parx Racing on Tuesday.
Ocasio won the second race on the card aboard Curlin Crush ($8.20) for trainer Carlos Guerrero.
After starting his career 3 for 84 in his native Puerto Rico, Ocasio has gone 159 for 857 in the United States, a win average of 18 percent.
◗ After being away for a month, Imperial Hint has returned from Dubai and is back in trainer Luis Carvajal Jr.’s stable at Parx.
Imperial Hint came down with a fever after shipping to Dubai in mid-March. His illness developed into pneumonia, forcing him to miss the $2 million Golden Shaheen and remain at Meydan Race Course until he was well enough to travel home.