Getting aboard Kentucky Oaks candidate Seaneen Girl for the first time,
jockey Rosie Napravnik worked her a half-mile at Churchill Downs Monday morning
for trainer Bernie Flint.
The filly was timed in :48 4/5 seconds, the 10th fastest workout Monday at
the distance. Her splits were :12 1/5 and 24 1/5, and she galloped out five
furlongs in 1:03.
Napravnik, who won the Oaks last year on Believe You Can, picked up the mount
on Seaneen Girl this week.
“I wasn’t sure for a while that I would even have a mount, and I kind of feel
like this is my race since last year, so I didn’t want to miss out on it,”
Napravnik said. “This filly has not done a lot wrong, and my first time on her,
I was very impressed with the way she moves, and she worked very well.
“She’s real responsive, she rated well, and I really didn’t ask for anything.
She worked very easily.”
“I love what I saw. I could have told you to the second what she would do. It
worked out just like I wanted it,” Flint said.
In other Kentucky Oaks news:
Sunland Oaks winner Midnight Lucky walked the shedrow Monday, the morning
after she after she breezed five furlongs in :59 3/5.
Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert said the gray filly came out of her work in
good shape.
“Midnight Lucky is definitely in the Oaks,” Baffert said. “It’s a tough
field. It’s the most competitive Oaks that I’ve ever been in. There are some
really fast fillies.”
Baffert smiled when someone told him that rain was in the forecast for later
in the week.
“They say always bet a gray horse in the mud,” he said.
Undefeated Gazelle winner Close Hatches was back on the track during the Oaks
and Derby session for some easy exercise under exercise rider Joanna Trout, one
day after an eye-catching half-mile breeze in :47 2/5, tied for the morning’s
third fastest of 47 at that distance.
“She just jogged one mile today and then walked through the paddock,” trainer
Bill Mott said.
Close Hatches has won her past two races — the Gazelle at Aqueduct and a
Gulfstream Park allowance — gate-to-wire. In her recent works she has
demonstrated brilliant speed and an aggressiveness that suggests she would be at
her best running free on the lead. With so much early speed in the Oaks, though,
Mott said Joel Rosario could rate her behind the pace if it looks too hot up
front.
“I think she could rate off it,” Mott said. “If she does I don’t think she’ll
be way out of it but I think she can probably do that. The jock feels like she’s
been fairly tractable.”
The First Defence filly came from well off the pace in her January debut,
closing from ninth before drawing off to win by seven lengths, but Mott said she
was a different horse that early in her development.
“She hadn’t been showing that much speed from the gate,” he said. “Her first
jump from that gate hadn’t been that quick so we didn’t expect her to be close
the first time she ran. She hadn’t been showing it in the mornings.”
Rose to Gold, a winner of five of seven career starts that include Grade 3
victories in the Delta Princess, Honeybee and Fantasy, galloped 1 1/2 miles
after the renovation break with Denis Roberson aboard for trainer Sal Santoro.
“This filly is as kind as she can be,” Roberson said. “This morning was the
most work I have had to do with her. She usually settles right in, but this
morning there was a horse that was working broke off in front of her and I eased
back a bit and then another set broke off behind me but then she settled right
in.”
Roberson began galloping Rose to Gold in mid-March and he likes what he has
seen from the filly in Louisville.
“She is really thriving here and progressing nicely,” Roberson said. “Calvin
(Borel) thinks she is doing very well here, and I concur.”
Just prior to 7 a.m. (EDT) on a cloudy but mild morning, trainer Richard
Mandella brought his champion filly Beholder through the six-furlong gap on the
backstretch under jockey-turned-exercise rider David Nuesch. The bay filly had a
special pair of black earmuffs atop her bay head.
“They mute sound for her,” the trainer said. “She hears well — too well.
She’s a bit high-strung and she’s an awful good-feeling filly, so we need to
tamp her down some. When we take her to the track in the mornings, or over to
the paddock to race in the afternoon, we use them. For racing itself, she’s fine
with that part and they aren’t necessary. She handles herself just fine with
that.”
Once on the oval, Beholder went down into the one-mile chute for several
go-rounds while kicking and bucking some just like a “good-feeling” horse might.
Mandella just smiled when he saw it.
Then the daughter of Henny Hughes galloped a mile and a quarter under stout
restraint, reaching out all the way.
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