Santa Anita shuts down
When another horse was fatally injured during a workout Tuesday morning, the 21st racing or training death this winter and the fifth in the last 10 days, Santa Anita did the only thing possible under the circumstances - it closed the track indefinitely for both racing and training.
The Saturday stakes card, which was to have included the Santa Anita Handicap and San Felipe Stakes, will be rescheduled. The San Felipe had been expected to feature a showdown between two undefeated Derby contenders, Game Winner, last year’s 2-year- old champ, and Improbable
In a statement released Tuesday night, Tim Ritvo, chief operating officer of The Stronach Group, said, “The safety, health and welfare of the horses and jockeys is our top priority. While we are confident that further testing will confirm the soundness of the track, the decision to close is the right thing to do at this time.”
When a racetrack suffers an inordinate number of breakdowns, the track itself is always the first thing to come under scrutiny. This is not surprising. Testing performed at Santa
Anita, however, which included bringing in an expert from the University of Kentucky, has thus far failed to find anything amiss. Former track superintendent Dennis Moore, who had left Santa Anita in December, has been taken on as a consultant to aid in the ongoing investigation.
It’s possible that additional study will discover a previously overlooked problem, one exacerbated by this winter’s unusually heavy and persistent rains. But, racing safety is a complicated issue, and breakdowns are rarely caused by problems with track surface alone. When Aqueduct went
through a similar spate of breakdowns a decade or so ago, NYRA (with urging from the State of New York) undertook a lengthy and detailed investigation that produced a large number of suggestions, including more rigorous pre-race veterinary inspections, that resulted in improvement in racetrack safety.
Aqueduct takes center stage
With Santa Anita closed, the weekend focus shifts to Aqueduct, which on Saturday will feature the 67th running of the Gotham Stakes (G3). Although the one-mile race has not been targeted by top Derby prospects in recent years, Saturday’s field has attracted the highly regarded Instagrand. The Into Mischief
colt, who will be making his first start in seven months, has been made the evenmoney favorite in the field of eight.
Instagrand could not have been more impressive in winning his only two starts. The $1.2 million two- year- old purchase broke his maiden by 10 lengths at Los Alamitos last June. Six weeks later, thrown into stakes competition at Del Mar, he demolished the field in the Best Pal (G2), winning by 10¼ lengths.
Although Instagrand figures to take most of the money in the Gotham, his likely opponents do include a pair of Grade 1 winners. Mind Control won last summer’s Hopeful (G1) at Saratoga. In his lone start of 2019, he was victorious in the ungraded Jerome,
which was run at Aqueduct at the same distance as the Gotham. Knicks Go won the Breeders’ Futurity (G1) at Keeneland last October and was runner-up behind Game Winner in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. The son of Paynter was unplaced in the Sam F. Davis Stakes (G3) in his only start this year.
There are two other Derby preps on Saturday’s schedule, the Tampa Bay Derby (G2) and the Jeff Ruby Steaks [sic]. In recent years, the Tampa Bay Derby has been won by several horses who were or became Grade 1 winners: Tapwrit, Carpe Diem, Ring Weekend and Verrazano. This year’s field of 11 includes only a single graded winner, Well Defined, who exits a win in the Sam F. Davis Stakes (G3).