Brilliant Speed, Santiva, Watch Me Go post works
Live Oak Plantation’s
Grade 1 Blue Grass winner Brilliant Speed
breezed five furlongs in 1:01 1/5 on Monday morning over the sloppy Churchill
Downs surface. It was the third-fastest of seven works at the distance.
Under assistant trainer Dan Blacker, the colt turned in fractions of :12 3/5,
:24 4/5, :36 2/5 and :48 2/5. His six-furlong gallop-out time was 1:15.
“I thought he went well. The work was good and he galloped out nicely,” said
trainer Tom Albertrani, who watched it from the backstretch clockers’ stand. “I
thought it was a nice work, what we were looking for.”
Brilliant Speed shipped over from Keeneland on Friday and galloped on the
surface on Saturday and Sunday mornings. Two days of rain forced Albertrani to
breeze the homebred colt on the muddy surface.
“I just wanted to see how he handled the track,” Albertrani said. “Today
wasn’t the best day with the rain that we’ve been having. Ideally, I would have
preferred a fast track, but there is no guarantee what the track might be like
on Saturday, either. Today was just kind of a maintenance move and I thought he
worked well.”
One can’t beat Mother Nature, but trainer Eddie Kenneally did his best to
keep pace with her by having his Kentucky Derby 137 hopeful Santiva on the track at 5:45 a.m. (EDT) Monday for his final major prerace
workout. Working in company with stablemate Commonwealth Rush, Santiva drilled a half mile in :50 1/5 under his Derby jockey Shaun Bridgmohan.
“He came home in :24 flat from the quarter-pole to the wire, so I’m very
happy with that,” Kenneally said. “I tried to get out there early today when the
track was as even as it could be. We worked over the best surface possible given
the weather.”
Official workout splits for Santiva were :13 3/5, :26 1/5 and :38 1/5, while
he galloped out five furlongs in 1:02 4/5 and six furlongs in 1:17 1/5.
“They finished up together and came home well, just like Eddie wanted,”
Bridgmohan said. “We’re less than a week out from the race, so it’s more
maintenance and you’re not looking for anything special. I thought he went very
well.”
Santiva exits a ninth-place finish in the Blue Grass at Keeneland, a less
than ideal prep for a horse who won last year’s Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club
here at Churchill Downs.
“He had just a terrible trip with no running room at Keeneland in the Blue
Grass,” Kenneally said. “He didn’t get everything out of the race like we would
have liked. But he was fit going into the race, so we’ll be fine. He’s plenty
fit.”
Trainer Kathleen O’Connell arrived at Barn 41 at 4 a.m. Monday hoping to get
a final workout into Watch Me Go before the forecast rains arrived
at Churchill Downs.
“When I got here this morning it was nice and the birds were singing, and I
said, ‘Ah, we’re going to make it.’ It wasn’t 15 minutes after that that it just
poured,” O’Connell said.
After walking the sealed racing surface, O’Connell decided to go ahead with a
scheduled five-furlong workout that she had postponed on Sunday because of
sloppy track conditions.
“It didn’t seem too bad. It was sealed and was better than it was on Sunday.
I figured the best time to go was early,” she said.
The Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby winner was one of the first horses on the track and
worked five furlongs from the half-mile pole in 1:02 under Freddie Lenclud,
turning in splits of :13, :24 4/5, :37 and :49 1/5.
“I like a long warm-up. I wasn’t looking for speed. Freddie was perfect. He
had worked this horse before, so I had faith in him. My most important thing was
the gallop-out,” said O’Connell, whose colt galloped out three-quarters in 1:15
and seven-eighths in 1:29 1/5.
The workout was particularly impressive for a horse that doesn’t handle wet
tracks well.
“He was on the bridle. It seems like if you’re supporting him, he’s good. But
in a race when you’re riding him, his head gets kind of thrown away,” O’Connell
said. “I just don’t think he’s as comfortable on an ‘off’ surface. Like I say,
it was sealed and it was good this morning.”
O’Connell has named Rafael Bejarano to ride Watch Me Go on Saturday.