Art Collector, Bruce Lunsford's homebred colt by Bernardini, rolled to his fourth consecutive win for trainer Tommy Drury on Sunday, winning the $200,000 Runhappy Ellis Park Derby at Ellis Park in Henderson, Ky.
Under confident handling from Brian Hernandez Jr., Art Collector covered 1 1/8 miles in 1:48.02, winning by about three lengths. Attachment Rate, who was wide much of the way, finished second for trainer Dale Romans and jockey Joe Talamo. Necker Island finished third, with Rowdy Yates fourth, Grade 3 Indiana Derby winner Shared Sense fifth and G3 Ohio Derby winner Dean Martini sixth in the field of 12 3-year-olds.
Art Collector set fractions of :23.33, :46.74, 1:10.70, and 1:35.25. Truculent, who pressured Art Collector for much of the way, finished last.
The race offered qualifying points (50-20-10-5) to the top four finishers for the Sept. 5 Kentucky Derby.
“He's done nothing wrong this year, he's answered every question,” Drury said on TVG after the race.
Art Collector came into the Ellis Park Derby off a 3 1/2-length win over the filly Swiss Skydiver in the G2 Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland on July 11, coming from just off the pace. He won two allowance races before that at Churchill Downs, one of them in wire-to-wire fashion.
“I never really sent him, he broke sharp like he always does,” Hernandez said on TVG. “If I needed do I thought I could run them off their feet. It was impressive. He was drawing away pretty easily. Like Tommy said, we wanted to use this race as a building block, a foundation.”
From the Distorted Humor mare, Distorted Legacy, Art Collector began his career racing on turf for trainer Joe Sharp. He finished sixth in his first dirt race at Churchill Downs last November, then came from off the pace to finish 7 1/2 lengths in front in a Nov. 30 allowance race. A post-race drug test turned up positive for the prohibited substance levamisole and Art Collector was disqualified from that win.
Lunsford subsequently moved the horse to Drury, who is based at the Skylight training center near Louisville.
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