Mucho Macho Man loses shoe in Preakness;
Isn’t He Perfect candidate for Belmont
Mucho Macho Man, third in the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby and sixth in
Saturday’s Grade 1 Preakness after
losing a front shoe, headed back to Belmont Park Sunday morning.
“He caught his left front shoe. I’m going to watch the replay
over and over and over again; I need to find out what happened with it,” said
trainer Kathy Ritvo, whose colt also lost his right front shoe in a third-place
finish in the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby.
“He’s got to be doing something. I haven’t had a horse pull a
shoe for three or four years and now I’ve got two in three races,” she added. “I
think he’s snatching himself coming out of the gate. I think he’s so excited to
get out of the gate that he’s springing before his front feet are gone. He’s not
a nervous horse. It’s got to be something. I’ve got to figure out what happened
and when he lost it.”
Mucho Macho Man had some early traffic problems before racing four and
five-wide under jockey Rajiv Maragh in the Preakness.
“Rajiv said he wasn’t handling the track. When he got to the
quarter-pole, he was just jumping up and down,” Ritvo said. “He’s got little
cuts all over him, but no big deal.”
Ritvo added that Mucho Macho Man appeared to come out of the Preakness in good
shape and was doing well Sunday morning. She’s going to continue to assess his condition before making a decision on
whether to run in the Grade 1 Belmont on June 11.
“We have plans to run in the Belmont, and we want to run in the Belmont, but
we have to see how he does,” Ritvo said. “I just put him on a van and he’ll be
back there this afternoon.”
Isn’t He Perfect, the ninth-place finisher in the Preakness, was
also vanned back
to Belmont Sunday morning and could be a candidate for the Belmont Stakes
at his home track in 20 days, according to trainer Doodnauth Shivmangal, who
flew back to New York Saturday night.
Shivmangal said his colt did not adjust well to his new
surroundings after arriving at the Pimlico Stakes Barn, his first time away from
New York.
“Perfect is a horse that takes his rest,” the Guyana
native explained. “I was very worried the first night we got here. He did not sleep; he
did not eat his food. He didn’t eat (Friday) morning and he did not sleep at
all, the guard told me. Perfect would always sleep in his stall.”
On race day, Isn’t He Perfect wasn’t showing his trainer normal behavior either.
“He’s a horse that’s really relaxed,” Shivmangal said. “When he
left his stall (Saturday) he was very quiet, but when he saddled in the infield
he was all hyped up and he broke out. He was perspiring a lot, and that’s not
him. My only concern was that he didn’t rest and he worked himself up too much
before the race. We did not see the real him.”
Still, the 30-1 outsider in the field managed to defeat five
others in the race.
“I’m pleased with the way he came back,” Shivmangal said. “I’m
going to speak to (owner/cousin) Dejainauth Ramnarayn and see what we do from
here — if we’re going to try for the Belmont or not.
“He’s a strong horse. Once
he gets home, he’ll eat and he’ll be back to normal. He looks very fit, no
problems, no cuts or anything. I am still high on him. I may run him or Harlan’s
Hello (Harlan’s Holiday) in the Belmont, maybe both of them. I don’t know yet.”