Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow) came out of his wire-to-wire victory in Saturday's GIII Lecomte S. in fine shape, Scott Blasi, assistant to trainer Steve Asmussen, said Sunday. The Winchell Thoroughbreds runner is expected to start next in the Feb. 13 GII Risen Star S.
Mandaloun (Into Mischief), the beaten favorite when third in the Lecomte, may get a change of equipment for his next start, according to trainer Brad Cox.
“We still think he is a very good horse,” Cox said of the Juddmonte Farm homebred. “He raced wide around both turns. I thought it was a good experience. He showed up. He ran his race. I think we are going to add blinkers. I talked it over with the Juddmonte team and [jockey] Florent [Geroux]. We kind of thought that ever since his first race. He came out it [Lecomte], so far so good. We will definitely look at coming back in the Risen Star.”
Cox also saddled Sun Path (Munnings) to a fourth-place finish in Saturday's GIII Silverbulletday S.
“I was super disappointed with the outcome of the Silverbulletday,” Cox admitted. “We don't see any physical issue with Sun Path. She appears to have come out of it well as of now. Obviously, we will back up a little bit. We won't run back in four weeks. We'll just try to train up to either the [Mar. 6 GIII] Honeybee [at Oaklawn Park] or the [Mar. 20 GII] Fair Grounds Oaks. They would really be our only options moving forward. We need a little more time between races. She's going to be a little bit of a question mark until we run her again. She was doing so well leading up to this race [Silverbulletday].”
Silverbulletday winner Charlie's Penny (Race Day) will now likely target the Feb. 13 GII Rachel Alexandra S. at Fair Grounds.
“So far everything looks good,” trainer Chris Block said. “She ate up last night and this morning, walked real well and she seems bright and not too knocked out. The next logical plan would be to point towards the Rachel Alexandra. What has pushed her forward is her mind and her determination. She's not a very big filly, kind of average in size and a little bit on the narrow side, but all that is relative to what she can do herself. Yesterday she was helped by the [slow] pace, but so was everybody else, or so I would have thought. She rose to the occasion, now it's time to see if she can take the next step forward. It was really nice to win this race at Fair Grounds. My family used to send horses here for the winter with [the late] Richie Scherer, and management has been very kind to us.”
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