Anneau d’Or heads to New Orleans

Nominations close Thursday for the $100,000 El Camino Real Derby on Feb. 15 at Golden Gate Fields, but the track’s best 3yearold won’t run in that race.

Instead, Anneau d’Or will compete the same day in the Grade 2, $400,000 Risen Star Stakes at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans.

Both races are 11⁄8 miles in distance, but the El Camino Real Derby offers just 17 Kentucky Derby qualifying points (10 to the winner). The Risen Star awards 85 (50 to the winner).

“We’d love to stay home but we’re trying to race for a little bit more money and more Derby points,” trainer Blaine Wright said. “At the same time, we wanted to travel as little as possible if we get into the Kentucky Derby. So it’s the Risen Star and the Santa Anita Derby (on April 4). That allows six weeks between races and time to recuperate from the travel.”

Anneau d’Or’s performances as a 2yearold in 2019 made him a leading candidate for the Kentucky Derby. He romped by 8 lengths in his debut at Golden Gate Fields and ran a closeup second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile and Los Alamitos Futurity.

National star Joel Rosario will replace Golden Gate Fields’ Juan Hernandez in the saddle for the Risen Star Stakes, and Anneau d’Or will race with blinkers for the first time. He has recorded three excellent workouts at GGF in them.

“It’s not that he hasn’t run well, but to get him to pass those horses in the last sixteenth,” Wright said. “We’re a head and a neck from the winning the Eclipse Award, and we’re trying to figure out how to get that done.”

Anneau d’Or couldn’t get by Storm the Court down the stretch of the Breeders’ Cup, nor could he do it against Thousand Words in the Los

Alamitos Futurity.

This is the second straight year that Wright and owner Peter Redekop have had a horse on the Kentucky Derby trail. In 2019, Another twist afate won the El Camino Real Derby but finished second in the Sunland Park Derby and Lexington Stakes, and his 38 points were two short of qualifying for the Kentucky Derby.

“We had to chase points last year, and we had to ship more than we liked and we don’t want to do that this year,” Wright said.

Anneau d’Or is tied for sixth on the qualifying list this year with 12 points, so a win in the Risen Star Stakes will assure him a berth in the starting gate at Churchill Downs on May 2. A secondplace finish (worth 20 points) would put him in great position with the Santa Anita Derby offering 170 points (100402010).