Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Double Crown set to hit road
Trainer Kathy Ritvo and her team will be looking for new lands to conquer with Double Crown after the up-and-coming 3-year-old capped a near-perfect opening half of the season with a three-quarter-length victory over With Verve in Saturday’s seven-furlong Carry Back at Gulfstream.
The Carry Back was the third win in four career starts for Double Crown, who had captured the 6 1/2-furlong Roar in his previous outing and is just a length from being perfect in his brief career – the margin by which he dropped his 3-yearold debut following a very unlucky trip April 26.
Owners Dean and Patty Reeves purchased Double Crown privately and sent him to Ritvo shortly after he won his career debut by a neck over Ournationonparade late last summer at Laurel. The Reeveses also bought Ournationonparade out of the same race, and he has raced in the shadow of Double Crown over the past 10 months.
Ournationonparade was, in part, responsible for his stablemate’s lone setback.
“Double Crown should be 4 for 4 if he hadn’t gotten stopped by Ournationonparade after he lost his rider in that race here a few months ago,” Ritvo recalled. “And even with all the trouble, he only got beat a length that day.”
Ritvo said she had the utmost confidence in Double Crown going into the Carry Back, despite it being the first time he had stretched out to seven furlongs.
“He’s just done nothing wrong since we got him and was doing so well going into the race,” Ritvo said. “When we started him back this spring, we planned on these last two stakes, the Roar and the Carry Back. Long-range plans don’t always work out in this business, but this one did.”
The question now remains where will the Reeveses, Ritvo, and stable agent Jay Stone go next with Double Crown.
“There’s nothing anymore for him here, so we’ll nominate him in a few stakes out of town and decide from there,” Ritvo said. “I’m not quite sure how far he’ll go or if he fits yet with the horses he’d meet in the two graded sprint stakes they have this summer at Saratoga. I’ll get together with Dean and Jay, and we’ll come up with a plan.”
While Double Crown had to work hard to win the Carry Back, there was even more drama earlier in the day when the odds-on Boerne defeated Estilo Talentoso by 1 3/4 lengths in the seven-furlong Azalea. The final margin of victory was misleading, considering the runner-up appeared to be making a menacing run at Boerne when she was forced to take up sharply after Boerne drifted into her path in late stretch.
Following a claim of foul and stewards’ inquiry, the result stood.
“I wasn’t nervous they’d take him down,” Boerne’s trainer, Juan Avila, said the following morning. “I knew our horse bothered the other one, but not enough to be disqualified. I was really happy to see her win like that, especially since we had a little setback with her 15 days before the race.”
Avila said he was considering a couple of possibilities out of town for Boerne’s next start, including the Eight Belles on Sept. 4 at Churchill Downs. Avila already plans to be in town to run King Guillermo in the Kentucky Derby on Sept. 5.
King Guillermo is considered among the leading Derby contenders following an easy victory in the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby and second-place finish behind the odds-on Nadal in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby earlier this year. King Guillermo had his first work since the Arkansas Derby on Saturday at Gulfstream Park, going four furlongs in a bullet 47 seconds, shading 23 seconds for his final quarter while just “coasting,” according to the track clocking staff.
“He’s come back perfectly fine since the Arkansas Derby and he went really easily in his first work,” Avila said.
Avila confirmed he intends to stick with his original plan of training King Guillermo up to the Kentucky Derby, with several more works over his home track at Gulfstream Park before shipping to Churchill Downs on July 27 to complete final preparations for the event.
Avila completed a big weekend Sunday afternoon when he sent out Belle Laura to an easy victory in the $60,000 In the Breeze Stakes. The win was the second in as many starts for the daughter of Mucho Macho Man since joining Avila’s barn earlier this season.
◗ A modest field of six fillies and mares will decide Wednesday’s $47,000 allowance/optional claiming feature, carded at six furlongs. Bargainaire, second in her last three starts, and Baccarat Fashion, taking a big drop in class and running for the $25,000 claiming tag after having been claimed for more than twice that amount just two starts back, loom the key contenders, along with speedy Tampa Bay Downs invader J’s Indian Charm.