Bet like he couldn't lose, Johannes strolled home much the best while making his two-turn bow in the Pasadena S. at Santa Anita Sunday. Taken in hand out of the gate, the heavy favorite settled at the back of the compact four-horse field heading into the backstretch. He rolled up four wide to challenge the pacesetters into the lane, pounced to the lead at midstretch and powered clear under a hand ride for an effortless victory.
“It's onward and upward,” said winning trainer Tim Yakteen. “It was a small field, but I think it was a great stepping stone for us to validate that we can two-turn. I'll get together with [owner/breeder] Joe [McCloskey] and come up with a game plan and see if we can have some fun. Very nice. We are very happy.”
Johannes graduated by an emphatic nine lengths while trying turf for the first time at Santa Anita last December and jumped up to stakes company with a late-closing win down the hill at Santa Anita in the Mar. 5 Baffle S.
“The thing that made me believe he could run a mile, was last time going down the hill, he was so relaxed out of the gate, and he was kind of push button,” said winning rider Umberto Rispoli. “It was a little messy going down the hill. Unfortunately, I couldn't have the spot I wanted, so I had to wait until the sixteenth of a mile and he was much the best in that race, and he proved that again today.
“I think he is just starting to understand the game. Today, he came out of the gate like, “What am I going to do?' and as soon as I put him in behind horses, he switched off and from there it was just a matter of letting him run. My hands got itchy around the turn and finally I was happy to let him run. I don't think we've seen the best of him.”
Johannes is the first foal out of stakes-placed Cuyathy, who was purchased by McCloskey for $50,000 out of the 2014 Keeneland September sale. The mare has a 2-year-old filly by Mastery, a yearling filly by Gun Runner and produced a filly by Knicks Go this year. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.
PASADENA S., $98,000, Santa Anita, 4-2, 3yo, 1mT, 1:33.79, fm.
1–JOHANNES, 120, c, 3, by Nyquist 1st Dam: Cuyathy (SP, $107,923), by Congrats 2nd Dam: Dance Darling, by Devil's Bag 3rd Dam: Danzig Darling, by Danzig
O/B-Cuyathy, LLC (KY); T-Tim Yakteen; J-Umberto Rispoli.
$60,000. Lifetime Record: 6-3-0-1, $170,059.
2–Game Time, 120, c, 3, Not This Time–Confession, by Broken
Vow. ($290,000 Ylg '21 KEESEP). O-Hronis Racing LLC;
B-Dermot Joyce (KY); T-John W. Sadler. $20,000.
3–Wizard of Westwood, 120, c, 3, Tu Brutus (Chi)–Figrare, by
Purge. ($20,000 Ylg '21 KEESEP). O-Andrew & Rania Warren;
B-Pope McLean (KY); T-Michael W. McCarthy. $12,000.
Margins: 3HF, 3/4, 7HF. Odds: 0.30, 2.80, 5.70.
Also Ran: Keen to Go. Scratched: Mucino.
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Approaching the four-week mark to the GI Kentucky Derby, trainer Todd Pletcher has three highly ranked contenders, and the most impressive thing about that collective is that the Hall-of-Fame conditioner has guided them through undefeated 2023 campaigns to date, meticulously mapping out their schedules to avoid overlap.
Divisional champ Forte (Violence), now 6-for-7, won Saturday's GI Florida Derby with a mad-dash flourish. 'TDN Rising Star' Tapit Trice (Tapit), the winner of the GIII Tampa Bay Derby, will be heavily favored to improve his 3-for-4 record with another score in Saturday's GI Blue Grass S. The 3-for-3 Kingsbarns (Uncle Mo) heads to Kentucky after wiring the GII Louisiana Derby.
Latching on to a proven trainer and the prospect of getting behind the “headline horses,” bettors accordingly pounded those three Pletcher trainees in Pool 6 of the Kentucky Derby Future Wager (KDFW).
Unlike pools 2 through 5 earlier this season that closed on Sunday evenings after each weekend's prep stakes had been run, this final version of the KDFW added speculative intrigue by closing at 6 p.m. Saturday, prior to the runnings of the Florida Derby and GI Arkansas Derby.
Forte closed as the 5-2 favorite, while Tapit Trice and Kingsbarns attracted 11-1 action as the co-second choices.
Forte being favored is no shock. But that prohibitively low price bettors jumped at Apr. 1 makes you wonder if some April fools got pranked in the futures pool by locking in a return that could be lower than Forte's actual mutuel on Derby day.
For perspective, only three times in the past 14 years has the Derby favorite been sent postward at 5-2 or lower odds on race day. Even the two recent, highly popular Triple Crown winners–American Pharoah and Justify–didn't get that heavily backed in their respective Derbies. Both went off at 2.9-1.
And the kicker is that bettors were willing to accept that apparently underlaid 5-2 price on Forte before knowing the results of the Florida Derby. Nor did they know how the colt came out of the race (reportedly fine).
But considering the historical starting prices in the Derby itself, do those ticket-holders still think they got good value on their KDFW investments? Presumably, they'll spend the next four weeks anxiously awaiting the Derby post draw, which presents an entirely unavoidable random wrinkle that will one way or the other affect Forte's Derby-day mutuel odds and his chances in the race itself.
As for the other two Pletcher-trained KDFW second choices, Tapit Trice at 11-1 has decent upside if he runs a monster race at Keeneland.
Kingsbarns, however, is likely to go off higher than his 11-1 KDFW price in the actual Derby mutuels.
Dropping down to 13-1 in Pool 6 of the KDFW, we find another seemingly underlaid surprise: Derma Sotogake (Jpn) (Mind Your Biscuits).
This 4-for-8 winner of the G2 UAE Derby could be part of the advancing wave of Japan-based horses rapidly making their marks in elite global races. But I doubt this colt will be going off lower than that ambitious KDFW price when he starts in Louisville. Since 2000, 12 winners of the UAE Derby have gone on to compete in the Kentucky Derby. The best finish among them was sixth (along with two DNF's and a 20th-place try).
Practical Move at 14-1 represents the first sniff of KDFW Pool 6 value.
For the past month, this son of Practical Joke has been ranked as the No. 2 contender on the TDN Derby Top 12 list, and he's either going to be the favorite or the second favorite in Saturday's GI Santa Anita Derby. A win or a smart second sets up this colt to peak in Louisville, and if that's the result, Practical Move will start as the second or third favorite in the Derby mutuels, somewhere in the 5-1 to 10-1 range.
But it's the other major contender in the Santa Anita Derby–Geaux Rocket Ride (Candy Ride {Arg})–whose overlaid 33-1 KDFW Pool 6 closing odds stand out like a beacon of opportunity.
For that juicy price, you get a 2-for-2, sped-centric prospect who has shown promise enough to be ranked at No. 4 within the TDN Top 12.
Geaux Rocket Ride will vie for favoritism with Practical Move on Saturday, and his Hall-of-Fame trainer, Richard Mandella, is known for not embarking upon the Derby path unless he is confident he has a colt with a realistic shot of winning on the first Saturday in May.
Kingsbarns | Ryan Thompson
Mandella hasn't started a horse in the Kentucky Derby since 2004. But in 2019 he was set to start the deserving favorite, Omaha Beach, before having to scratch days before the Derby when the colt was discovered to have an entrapped epiglottis.
Parked much, much deeper down the list among the 39 individual horses and the 17-1 “all others” field option for KDFW Pool 6 is one final, tantalizing long shot worth mentioning: The Brad Cox-trained Slip Mahoney at an astounding 130-1.
He's an Arrogate colt out of an A.P. Indy mare who will be among the favorites in Saturday's GII Wood Memorial S. at Aqueduct. Slip Mahoney was slow from the gate and second best with a big late move from 13th behind a 7 1/2-length runaway winner in the muddy GIII Gotham S. back on Mar. 4.
His distance-oriented pedigree should appreciate the stretch out to nine furlongs from three one-turn miles. And if he runs well enough to accrue the points (he's currently No. 31 with 20 on the qualifying list), bettors will likely send him off exponentially lower in the Louisville mutuels.
Repole Stable and St. Elias Stable's Forte, a popular and determined winner of the $1-million Curlin Florida Derby (G1) presented by Hill 'n' Dale Farms at Xalapa on Saturday at Gulfstreaam Park, will remain in South Florida for now to await his next assignment in the May 6 Kentucky Derby (G1).
Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher reported Sunday that the 2-year-old male champion of 2022 emerged from his one-length victory over Mage in good order and left Gulfstream Park early Sunday morning to return to Pletcher's winter base at Palm Beach Downs.
“He's good. He shipped back early this morning and he looks very well,” Pletcher said. “We'll kind of leave it open. I think we'll stay here at least a couple of weeks. We'll monitor the weather here, that it doesn't start to get too hot, and kind of monitor what the Louisville forecast looks like and if it kind of becomes springtime and [there's] not a lot of rain in the forecast then we might shift up there for his last couple of works. I think we'll just play it by ear for a little while and see how things are developing.” (See YouTube video below of Todd Pletcher on Sunday morning).
Forte had plenty to overcome in the Florida Derby to earn his fifth straight victory and fourth in a Grade 1 in an effort and under circumstances that Pletcher felt would be an ideal bridge to the 1¼-mile Kentucky Derby.
“I think the one thing we learned in the Florida Derby is that he handled the race really well. The best part of the race for him was the last sixteenth of a mile, which gives you confidence that the added distance won't be an issue,” Pletcher said. “He seems to have taken it well. He was on his toes after the race which he normally is, just like he is kind of in the walking ring beforehand.
“It showed that he still had some good energy left after the race, but we'll learn a lot more about that as we kind of train this week,” he added. “What was impressive yesterday was when he did make the lead, he kind of pricked his ears again which we've seen him do a number of times. It kind of makes you believe there's a little more in the tank there.”
Sent off the 1-5 favorite, Forte had to beat the largest Florida Derby field since Big Brown also defeated 11 rivals in 2008 and had to do it from the second-widest post since 1991 – Big Brown won from Post 12 and Barbaro from Post 10 in 2006. Both horses would go on to win in Kentucky.
It was a record-extending seventh Florida Derby victory for Pletcher following Scat Daddy (2007), Constitution (2014), Materiality (2015), Always Dreaming (2017), Audible (2018) and Known Agenda (2021). Always Dreaming gave Pletcher his second Kentucky Derby win after Super Saver in 2010.
“The first one was great and every one since then has also been special,” Pletcher said. “We've been very fortunate and blessed.
“The schedule's changed a bit. When I first started coming to Gulfstream the Florida Derby was sort of a prep for a final prep, and now, with the positioning of it five weeks before the Kentucky Derby, to me, it's kind of become the ideal Derby prep,” he added. “I love the spacing of it, the five weeks until the Kentucky Derby. So it's kind of changed a little bit as we've gone along, but really I like where it's positioned.”
In its storied history, the Florida Derby has produced 45 starters that have gone on to win a remarkable 58 Triple Crown races. Twenty-four of those wins have come in the Derby, with Always Dreaming being the most recent.
The Kentucky Derby will be the third start of a sophomore campaign for Forte that began with a powerful 4 ½-length triumph in the Fountain of Youth (G2) March 4 at Gulfstream, coming four months to the day since clinching his division championship in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile (G1). His other wins at 2 came in the Hopeful (G1) and Breeders' Futurity (G1), and he currently tops the Kentucky Derby leaderboard with 190 points.
“We liked the schedule that we laid out for him. We liked the Fountain of Youth as his comeback race, which went very smoothly. Then we got a good solid race in the Florida Derby,” Pletcher said. “Part of the reason we chose the Florida Derby over the Blue Grass was the additional week to the Kentucky Derby. I think that spacing is good, hopefully, to have him move forward again.”
Rather than going extremely wide after the short run to the first turn in the Florida Derby, jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. opted to drop in and save some ground and wound up trailing all but two horses into the backstretch. Ortiz let Forte find his stride and navigated a trip around horses but still had to chase down Mage, who had gotten the jump on Forge with a bold move on the far turn. Ortiz kept after Forte and he responded even after Mage opened up midway through the stretch to what seemed an insurmountable lead.
“I thought when he angled out there was still a chance, but then when he kind of came by where I was sitting in the grandstand at the eighth pole he still had a lot to do. At that point I was kind of thinking, man, I hope he can get up for second,” Pletcher said. “And then all of a sudden he kind of dropped down. You can visually see him lower down and start extending. To think that when he came by me at the eighth pole that he was going to win by a length, I would have thought that was impossible at that point.
“A race like this where he's 1-5 on the board and everyone's expecting a win – it's not always easy to win a race so you don't take anything for granted, especially when we drew an outside post,” he added. “You're nervous for the horse, wanting him to perform to his capabilities. Knowing how good he is just adds a little more tension to it.”
OGMA Investments, Ramiro Restrepo, Sterling Racing and CMNWLTH's Mage, in just his third career start, earned 40 points for his runner-up finish and has likely earned a spot in the Derby field with a total of 50, ranking 12th on the list. The Good Magic colt entered the Florida Derby off a front-running maiden win in January and a fourth in the Fountain of Youth trailing Forte and Holy Bull (G3) winner Rocket Can and just a length behind Cyclone Mischief.
Trainer Dale Romans indicated Albaugh Family Stables and Castleton Lyons' Cyclone Mischief will be Derby-bound. He followed up a redemptive third in the Fountain of Youth with another strong third in the Florida Derby and ranks 15th with 45 points.
“He looks good,” Romans said Sunday. “We look forward to the Derby. His last couple races have been good and he keeps improving, so we'll have him back in there.”
