Sebastian Madrid has had a lucrative association with GOURMET DINNER (Trippi),
Ramon Dominguez, the Eclipse Award-winning jockey of 2010, has been summoned
“Sebastian did a great job with the horse; he’s one of the reasons we’re in
There is always jockeying for position on the Road to the Kentucky Derby, and
“He’s a colt that needs a strong rider, and he’s a colt that really runs from
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Gourmet Dinner will need a strong ride from Dominguez to prevail in the
Fountain of Youth, in which he will clash with TO HONOR AND SERVE (Bernardini),
the 8-5 morning-line favorite who will be making his seasonal debut after a pair
of victories in the Nashua S. (G2) and Remsen S. (G2); and SOLDAT (War Front),
who is rated second at 2-1 after winning an allowance at Gulfstream by more than
10 lengths. Standridge, whose colt is rated third at 5-1, will be making his
second start of 2011 after finishing third in the Holy Bull (G3) at Gulfstream
on January 30.
“I think the race sets up perfectly for us with Soldat in the ‘one’ hole and
To Honor and Serve being on the outside — he’s going to have to use him a
little bit to get position,” he said. “I think those two will be running one-two
and set it up for us.”
Gourmet Dinner has been training brilliantly at Gulfstream since the Holy
Bull and tuned up on Wednesday with a three-furlong bullet workout in :34 4/5.
“We just kind of let him do what he wanted, and he did it, believe it or not,
very easily,” Standridge said. “He’s a good horse, and good horses do that.”
The bay colt never showed such explosiveness while training and racing at
Calder last year.
“Even though he won his first three starts and won the first two legs of the
Stallion Stakes and was second in the last one, he did not like that surface.
You had to start riding on this horse at the five-eighths pole at Calder,”
Standridge said.
“He was just good enough to beat those horses at Calder, but he did not like
that track.”
Gourmet Dinner won his debut at Calder last July, scoring by a length over
“When we got him off that track at Calder and took him to Louisiana (for the
In his first race outside Calder, Gourmet Dinner burst into this year’s
The Florida-bred colt was subsequently shipped to Hollywood Park to run in
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“It was more the trip. I think he handled the Poly fine. He got pinched at
the break. Sebastian moved him too early down the backside to get him in
position,” Standridge said. “He ran his race; he made a tremendous move; he
should have been second that day; but getting pinched at the break and losing
his position got him beat that day, not the track.”
In the Holy Bull, Gourmet Dinner was no match for Dialed In (Mineshaft), but
wasn’t helped by a slow start from the 1 post position.
“It was the post position; it was not the horse. The ‘one’ is the kiss of
death going a mile,” Standridge said. “He ran his race that day. I don’t
know if he was going to beat Dialed In, but he should have been an easy second
that day, if he’d been in any other post.”
Having already earned $700,000 in graded-stakes earnings and a place in the
starting gate for the Kentucky Derby, Gourmet Dinner is a valuable commodity.
“We’ve had a lot of offers, and a lot of them have gotten real close, but we
just haven’t got the deal done,” Standridge said.
The Kentucky Derby, if Gourmet Dinner is still in his stable, would be a
dream destination for his trainer.
“It’s pretty exciting to think about. You have to be extremely lucky,” he
said. “That’s a once-in-a-lifetime deal to have a horse good enough to run in
the Derby. I think it’s more luck than anything. This is a legitimate Derby
horse and he’s just a homebred from Ocala.”
A victory in the Fountain of Youth, though, could prompt an owner with Derby
Fever to make Our Sugar Bear Stable an offer it can’t refuse.
A win Saturday would also make Gourmet Dinner eligible for the Preakness 5.5
bonus series, which would require him to win the Florida Derby (G1) on April 3
to have a chance to win $5.5 million in bonuses for his connections with a
victory in the Preakness S. (G1) at Pimlico on May 21.