Rebel winner goes to Preakness, EQ out,
One Oaklawn stakes winner enters the storyline for Preakness 146 while another drops out.
That was the upshot of early-week announcements that champion Essential Quality would miss the middle jewel of the Triple Crown May 15 at Pimlico but that Concert Tour would join the fight after skipping the Kentucky Derby.
Essential Quality, making his 3-year-old debut, won Oaklawn’s Grade 3 $750,000 Southwest Feb. 27. Later winning the Grade 2 Blue Grass at Keeneland, the Tapit colt suffered his first career defeat when fourth, beaten a length, on Saturday at Churchill Downs.
Trainer Brad Cox said Sunday that Essential Quality, who had won two Grade 1s in a fiverace career, traveled farther from an outside post than winner Medina Spirit and, in his mind, was the best horse.
With no chance to win the Triple Crown, Essential Quality might go on to the Belmont Stakes June 5 with a long-range goal of the Travers Aug. 28 at Saratoga. Tiz the Law won both races last year, a shortened June running of the Belmont and a Travers victory preceding the colt’s runner-up finish in the first September Kentucky Derby.
“There are other options,” said Jimmy Bell of Godolphin USA, “and there are other factors that come into that. Nothing is set in stone.
“The goal was to get to the Kentucky Derby. We got there. Now, then, we reset, recalibrate.
The goal is now the Travers,” Bell told Louisville-based website horseracingnation.com.
Cox still has Derby runner-up Mandaloun and stakes winner Caddo River pointing to the Preakness. Caddo River, owned by Hot Springs lumberman John Ed Anthony’s Shortleaf Stable, missed the Derby after running a fever.
Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert, meanwhile, appears likely to have two horses in the Preakness, which like the Derby he has won a record seven times. Longshot Derby winner Medina Spirit apparently will be joined by once-beaten Concert Tour, Grade 2 winner of Oaklawn’s Rebel March 13 but third in the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby April 10.
Daily Racing Form first reported the story Monday that Concert Tour will enter the Preakness. The colt was withdrawn from consideration for the Derby after a puzzling Arkansas Derby, collaring pacesetter Caddo River in the stretch but nipped for second.
Medina Spirit, a Grade 3 winner in California but dismissed at 12-1 as Baffert’s only Derby starter, led from gate to wire at Churchill Downs, winning by a half-length over Mandaloun and giving Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez his fourth race victory.
The victory did not necessarily shock Baffert assistant Jimmy Barnes, who cared for Triple Crown winners American Pharoah and Justify.
“Was I surprised?” Barnes said. “He was running against good horses in California. California horses are usually right there in the Kentucky Derby. He’d run second to (now-injured stablemate) Life Is Good. He was second to John Sadler’s horse (Rock Your World) in the Santa Anita Derby. So he’d run respectable races, maybe not the way we needed him to run.
“He wants to be up front, out in the clear and we had other horses who were faster than him. … He ended up having to be behind and having to close. But going a mile and a quarter, you just never know: Are we going to on the lead the whole day?
“I thought there was enough speed that someone would have gone with us.”
Instead, Medina Spirit led after every pole while Rock Your World did not break cleanly and finished 17th.
Ram, an Oaklawn maiden winner who took a first-level allowance on the Kentucky Derby undercard at Churchill Downs, is a possibility for the Preakness, said five-time race winner Wayne Lukas. The Hall of Fame trainer’s last of 13 Triple Crown victories came in the 2013 Preakness with Oaklawn-raced Oxbow.
Ram would represent second-year sire American Pharoah in the Preakness, which the colt won in 2015 en route to becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years. Lukas has handled three Grade 1 winners for the colt’s owners, Christina Baker and William Mack.
“He’s been slow to develop, but he’s come along and he is really in great shape right now,” Lukas said. “If we manage him a little bit he’s going to be a factor.”