Heading To Derby After Big A Victory
from the NYRA press office
Trainer Jimmy Jerkens was still basking on Sunday morning, Apr. 6, in the glow of Wicked Strong’s emphatic victory over previously undefeated Samraat and Social Inclusion in Saturday’s Grade 1, $1 million TwinSpires.com Wood Memorial Stakes.
The win gave Wicked Strong 100 qualifying points for the Kentucky Derby, ensuring him a spot in the starting gate for the May 3 race, but Jerkens said he and the colt’s owner, Centennial Farms, hadn’t made any firm plans for a trip to Louisville.
“We don’t really know anything yet; we haven’t talked but I am sure we will this afternoon or tonight or tomorrow,” said Jerkens, whose father, Hall of Fame trainer H. Allen Jerkens, won the 1992 Wood with Devil His Due. “It’s kind of early. I don’t really organize horses’ training right down to the minute. I like to have a little bit of a plan, but I don’t want to be stuck to something if I see something I don’t like. Thinking off the top of my head, I hear there’s a plane leaving the Monday before the Derby; we’d probably want to do that. He’d do the majority of his training here at Belmont Park.”
Jerkens said Wicked Strong looked good, albeit a little tired, this morning. The Hard Spun colt ran the 1 1/8-mile Wood in 1:49.31, the fastest since Bellamy Road’s record 1:47.16 in 2005.
“He was a little tired, which is understandable,” said Jerkens, adding that Wicked Strong’s schedule calls for him to walk for two days, then gallop, then walk again. “Usually, he’s hogging the hotwalker. He walked around like a regular horse this morning.”
Wicked Strong, named in recognition of the heroes and victims of last year’s Boston Marathon bombing, is one of a number of graded stakes winners trained by Jerkens and his father for the Massachusetts-based Centennial Farms.
Samraat, who suffered his first career defeat when second by 3 1/2 lengths to Wicked Strong, will breeze twice at Aqueduct before he departs for Louisville, Ky. to compete May 3 in the Kentucky Derby, trainer Rick Violette said Sunday morning.
“In two weeks he’ll go a half [mile], and then a week later he’ll go a mile, and then on [Apr. 28] we’ll get on a plane and go to Kentucky,” said Violette, who trains the homebred for Leonard Riggio’s My Meadowview Farms.
In contrast to the Wood, Samraat raced outside his main competition in the Withers and Gotham, and Violette hopes the experience gained by the son of Noble Causeway will help him when he competes in the Kentucky Derby.
“If he’s a good horse, he’s supposed to move forward off this,” said Violette. “Most tough running experiences make the better ones better.”
Owner Ron Sanchez looked anything but dismayed that his beaten 3-2 favorite Social Inclusion didn’t win the Wood Memorial Saturday. On the contrary, he was delighted with his colt’s third-place finish behind Wicked Strong and Samraat after clearing off by 1 1/2 lengths at the top of the stretch.
“He ate everything this morning; he’s happy,” Sanchez said Sunday morning.
Sanchez said Social Inclusion would be at Gulfstream Park to train for the Preakness Stakes on May 17. The Wood effort was an attempt to get the colt into the Kentucky Derby, but Sanchez said there would be no further push for the first leg of the Triple Crown.
“If we can make the Derby, we’re going to go, but I think the main goal is the Preakness,” Sanchez said. “It was the original plan. It’s going to be tough to be in the Derby, you know? Actually, we are in spot 22 with 20 points, and there are like four preps coming up. It wasn’t our main goal to get into the Derby, but we gave it a try.”
