Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Yorkton looks sharp and ready for Kennedy Road Stakes
ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Yorkton captured the first graded stakes win of his career in the Grade 3 Bold Venture Stakes at Woodbine on Sept. 15. He nearly made it two in a row next time out, finishing within a neck of winner Hembree in the Grade 2 Nearctic Stakes on Oct. 13. He’ll get a chance to make amends Saturday when he starts in the Grade 2 Kennedy Road Stakes over seven furlongs on Tapeta.
Yorkton is in the best form of his career, and the Chiefswood Stable homebred has shown it in his last two works, including breezing five furlongs in 59.20 seconds on Tapeta on Saturday morning.
“He’s so good right now, knock on wood,” trainer Stu Simon said. “He worked fantastic in between here. I didn’t want to run him back in the prep and jam races up. He runs good fresh, so we made the decision . . . to wait and get him ready for the Kennedy Road.”
Simon said Yorkton hasn’t responded well to softer turf conditions in the past, and the connections had debated whether to run him at all in the Nearctic with the turf listed as good that day. He turned in a strong performance nonetheless, but Simon felt the result could have been better if not for an unfortunate incident close to the wire.
“We were on the borderline and we thought it was just firm enough that we had to try it,” he said. “He ran a huge race. The rider dropped his stick at the eighth pole, otherwise I think he would have won that race, too.”
Bold Script getting a break
Following her dominant 7 1/2length victory in the Princess Elizabeth Stakes back on Nov. 4, Bold Script will get the rest of the year off, trainer Stu Simon said.
Bold Script could have come back in the $125,000 Ontario Lassie Stakes, scheduled to be run at Woodbine on Dec. 9, but Simon said owner-breeder Chiefswood Stable has its sights set on next summer’s Woodbine Oaks as a long-term target.
“She’s in fine health and everything, but she’s had enough starts,” he said. “She’s had five starts and we just want to take a step back and give her a little time. She’s going to be in Florida for a little break and then get ready to run another year.”
Coming into the Princess Elizabeth, Bold Script had made all four of her starts on turf, including a pair of races on yielding ground. But Simon said he had confidence in Bold Script’s ability to handle the surface change given the way she had been working over the Tapeta.
“You go down the turf path and then you keep on it because you’re having enough success, but I wasn’t scared to try her on Tapeta,” he said. “I had breezed her over it so many times and she had worked well that I wasn’t really concerned about it. She showed her true worth. I think the soft turf is about the only thing she doesn’t really like.”
Simon said he is hoping to get a race or two into Bold Script before making the trip back to Woodbine next spring, and may even give her a start over the dirt at Gulfstream Park or Keeneland.
“We like to explore things,” he said. “We’ll probably try her on the dirt down there once and then see what path it goes from there.”
Meet win records could fall
Jockey Eurico Da Silva and trainer Norm McKnight have combined to win 31 of their 85 starts together during the 2018 Woodbine season, and that success has both men close to breaking the track’s singlemeet win records.
Following racing action on Sunday, Da Silva sits first in the Woodbine jockey standings with 204 wins, marking the fourth consecutive year that the rider has reached the 200-win milestone. He’s chasing Mickey Walls’s record of 221 wins in a single Woodbine meet, which was set back in 1991. Da Silva recorded six victories last week, including a win aboard Avie’s Flatter in Sunday’s Coronation Futurity.
McKnight, meanwhile, sits at 112 wins following racing action on Sunday, putting him eight victories away from breaking Mark Casse’s meet record of 119 wins, set back in 2011. McKnight recorded four wins last week, all on the Saturday card.
McKnight has five starters spread out over four races on the Wednesday night card, three of whom are morning-line favorites. Da Silva, meanwhile, has five mounts on the Wednesday night card, including three for McKnight.