Mage | Horse Racing Free Tips

Mage Returns To Work Tab

Mage (Good Magic) recorded his first published workout since winning the GI Kentucky Derby when he breezed five furlongs in 1:07.20 at the Thoroughbred Center in Lexington Friday morning. His connections have yet to decide on his next start.

“We gave him 17 days without a saddle or, obviously, going to the track, so he got a really big break,” said co-owner Ramiro Restrepo. “He was kind of getting a bit bored and wanting to do something so it was time to get him rolling. He has been back on the track for a little under two weeks now. This was his first leg-stretcher. It was a little wake up call. This was not a matter of tightening the screws. It was more like his first day back in the gym.”

Restrepo said that no one should read too much into how slow the time of the work was.

“He had a little over two weeks of doing absolutely nothing and kind of laying out,” he said. “The last thing you would want is to rip him out of the gate. It was more of a strong gallop that was recorded as a breeze. It was the first work back, so the time has nothing to do with it. It was to show we're back in workout mode. We've never cared about his times in works. There's a bigger objective here than the time of a workout. You don't get prize money or trophies for winning in the mornings. It's just a fitness thing to get him up and at them.”

Restrepo said that three options are being discussed regarding where Mage will run next. They are the GI Haskell S., the GII Jim Dandy S. or the GI Travers.

“Whether we point him to the Jim Dandy, the Haskell or go straight to the Travers, there's a 33 percent chance with all three,” he said. “It's going to be a matter of seeing how he's doing once we get him on a steady work pattern. The No. 1 goal is to make it to the Travers. Bar none, the Travers is the big show for us. He's obviously proven at the mile and a quarter. He'll be shipping to Saratoga sooner rather than later.”

Also, yet to be resolved is what Javier Castellano will do in the event that Mage and GI Belmont S. winner Arcangelo (Arrogate) show up in the same race. If both stay healthy, they will likely face each other sometime this summer, perhaps in the Travers.

“So many things can happen and we are quite a ways away from when he races again, so we haven't even broached the subject with Javier regarding what his decision might be or what his thoughts are,” Restrepo said. “Let's not put the cart before the horse. Let's get him in race shape and then we will start having those discussions with Javier.”

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Mage Replica Added to Derby Museum Winner’s Circle Exhibit

The addition of a replica of Mage (Good Magic), the 149th Kentucky Derby champion, is among the features added to the Winner's Circle exhibit at the Kentucky Derby Museum. A local artist, Mike Prather, produced the airbrushed the replica. Also,

exhibit provides the Mage team's story and their journey to the Kentucky Derby stage through the self-guided panels in the exhibit.

The Museum will also feature unique artifacts:

Two of Mage's horseshoes worn during the Kentucky Derby
A harness worn by Mage
A Mage hat signed by the team

The Museum's signature 18-minute movie, The Greatest Race, now also includes Mage's late charge to win in Derby 149.

The Museum also updated its lobby banner with pictures of the Mage team celebrating their win. Matted prints of Mage working out and crossing the finish line, shot by photographer Ted Tarquinio, are also available. Prints are available for purchase at the Kentucky Derby Museum Store or online: DerbyMuseumStore.com

For more info on the museum's latest updates, visit derbymuseum.org/derby149

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The Week in Review: Triple Crown, Let’s Talk…

Well, Triple Crown, now that the book has been closed on your 2023 campaign, it's time for your annual performance review.

Yes, I realize you're not a tangible, actual entity, and that your entire being is really just a concept based around the sequence of three historic horse races conducted over a five-week span every spring. As such, perhaps you think you're above a little constructive criticism. But we're living in a new era of accountability and I know you want to do your part to remain the focal point on which our sport so vitally depends. So let's begin…

For starters, thanks for saving the best performance for last. We all know you weren't technically “on the clock” this year, because no Triple Crown sweep was on the line this past Saturday.

Sure, there's always tremendous appeal in getting to potentially witness a once-in-a-generation horse run the Grade I table in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness S., and Belmont S. But some of the better overall experiences on Belmont Park's big day have been years in which no Triple Crown sweep was up for grabs. Although a 50,000 attendance cap would have been imposed either way, allowing 48,089 racegoers to enjoy a comparatively uncrowded afternoon of formful stakes action and big-event socialization without having to endure excruciatingly long lines for betting and basic amenities is always a plus.

The Belmont undercard stakes this year touched on just the right mix of intriguing and, at times, inspirational story lines. The distaff division is enjoying a nice run right now, anchored by a reliable cast of well-matched characters, with Clairiere (Curlin) executing an impeccably timed late run to win the GI Ogden Phipps S. for the second consecutive year. Caravel (Mizzen Mast), a Pennsylvania-bred mare with a penchant for unleashing triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures when sprinting on the turf against males, did so again on Saturday, extending her winning spree to five with a speed-centric victory in the GI Jaipur S. And although it hardly seems fair to keep relegating fan-fave Cody's Wish (Curlin) to undercard status when he's an A-list headliner in his own right, this deep closer again uncorked a loop-the-group move that wowed the crowd (112 Beyer!) and left a decent field reeling in the GI Metropolitan H., proving he currently has no peer in the dirt mile division while winning for the sixth straight time.

The crowning achievement, of course, was the gutsy score by 7-1 upsetter Arcangelo (Arrogate) in the Belmont S., propelling his conditioner, Jena Antonucci, into the history books as the first woman trainer of a Triple Crown race winner.

The “Test of a Champion' win by the underdog gray (who cost just $35,000 as a yearling) also capped a nimble feat of Triple Crown jockeying by Javier Castellano, who pulled off the unusual double of winning the Derby with Mage (Good Magic), and then the Belmont with Arcangelo after Mage ran third in the Preakness and bypassed the Belmont.

Despite being elected to the Hall of Fame in 2017, Derby and Belmont wins had eluded Castellano up until this season. We can now look forward to the drama of Castellano possibly having to choose between riding either Mage or Arcangelo should the Derby and Belmont winners cross paths later on this summer, perhaps in the GI Travers S. Regardless of which one he opts for, it's a nice problem to ponder.

But please, Triple Crown, in future years, spare us the “smoke show” that preceded this year's Belmont Stakes Day, forcing the cancellation of Thursday's racing at Belmont Park and almost putting the big day in doubt until the air cleared.

For certain, dangerous air quality because of forest fires hundreds of miles away is out of your direct control. But the unhealthy haze and apocalyptic-looking yellow skies did happen on your watch, Triple Crown, and like it or not, the sport is going to have to reckon with–and have contingency plans for–similar adverse environmental circumstances down the road. Get ready for a summer of becoming just as familiar with the abbreviation AQI (air quality index) as you are with AQU (Aqueduct).

Winding the watch back five weeks, what stands out is how the entire complexion of the Triple Crown pivoted on the morning of the Derby, when morning-line favorite and 'TDN Rising Star' Forte (Violence) was compelled to scratch because of a right front foot bruise. That news overshadowed the defection of not one, but three top California-based contenders–Practical Move (Practical Joke), Geaux Rocket Ride (Candy Ride {Arg}) and Skinner (Curlin)–because they had all spiked fevers earlier in the week.

And although the 15-1 victory by the small-framed Mage had a very likeable “little horse that could” vibe about it, the industry never got to capitalize on that story line because of the sobering and oppressive news of the 12 Thoroughbred deaths at Churchill Downs during the early portion of the Derby meet, a crisis that to this point has not been shown to have any exact or common cause.

Mage managed to win the first leg of the Triple Crown in just lifetime start number four. That's great for the colt and his connections, but not necessarily ideal in terms of adding to the current “less is more” trend of racing top-level sophomores so sparingly. Too many horses are being aimed for the Triple Crown with only two races between the first Saturday in November and the first Saturday in May, diminishing the value of being able to enjoy and assess emerging stars.

Underscoring how the Derby itself is devolving into a be-all/end-all, one-shot endeavor at the expense of the Triple Crown race that follows it, for the first time in 75 years, Mage was the only horse out of the Derby to enter the Preakness. That hadn't happened since 1948, when Citation scared off a large portion of his competition en route to his Triple Crown sweep. Mage didn't so much “scare off” his rivals this year as the connections of those horses hewed to the increasingly standard script that calls for post-Louisville bubble wrap and rest instead of crab cakes and robust competition in Baltimore.

As a result, the Preakness this year lured only seven to the entry box. Two of them were Maryland-based longshots and two others were taking a shot chiefly because they had earned paid-for starting berths by winning minor prep stakes earlier in the year.

National Treasure (Quality Road) ended up sleep-walking the Preakness field on the front end. His slow-paced victory was not an artistic success, and the lack of depth in the middle jewel did spur the predictable assortment of columns and social media opinionizing advocating for restructuring the Triple Crown series to better align with the realities of race-spacing.

While fiddling with the Triple Crown schedule remains more of a thought experiment than an actual movement that has traction, the sport is most certainly going to have to brace for a near-term tradition jolt in time for the 2025 Belmont S.

After the 2024 edition, Belmont Park will undergo its projected $455-million teardown and rebuild, and the New York Racing Association will have to decide where to stage the concluding jewel of the series in what is expected to be a one-year interim until the reimagined version of Belmont Park opens.

Moving the Belmont S. to Aqueduct–like during 1963 through 1967, when the current version of Belmont was under construction–is an option. But heading upstate to Saratoga Race Course would also be a tantalizing tweak to tradition.

Are you up for it, Triple Crown?

This concludes your annual performance review. We'll score it a C for both the Derby and the Preakness this year. The Belmont rates an A-minus.

In terms of the overall series, we'll call it a “work in progress.” That's because the sport can always benefit by leaving room for–and expecting–Triple Crown improvement.

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This Side Up: Plus Ca Change….

At a time when so many people seem to be allowing a duty of vigilance to crumble into morbid defeatism, it seems a little unfair that our sport should be going through such a hard time even as we approach the 50th anniversary of the most luminous tour de force in the story of the modern breed.

Of course, as some powerful evocations of the time have lately reminded us, Secretariat arrived as a sunbeam into a wider world darkened by Vietnam and civic unrest. And nor should we deceive ourselves that even our own, notoriously insular community was back then immune to some of the things that vex us in 2023.

For instance, without reprising what have doubtless become tiresomely familiar objections to tinkering with the Classic schedule, let's not forget that Secretariat faced down a Triple Crown drought stretching to Citation in 1948. Obviously a still longer wait followed Seattle Slew and Affirmed, but we've found two horses equal to the task in the last eight years. Even so, the trainers are somehow trying to bully us into reconciling the paradox that they want more time between the races and therefore (assuming this indeed renders those races more competitive) to extend the intervals between precisely those Triple Crown winners that supposedly represent our best route to wider engagement.

Well, the world moves on. And it's not as though the Thoroughbred has ever permitted hard and fast rules anyway.

On the one hand, it's pretty unarguable that the old school, by exposing their horses more, helped the public to develop a rooting interest. If Flightline (Tapit) was perhaps as talented as we've seen since Secretariat, in making just six starts he barely scratched the surfaced of national attention.
And I do like to think there were other, incidental gains in the aggressive campaigning of horses, whether in terms of educating the animal or showcasing the type of genes that breeders should wish to replicate. But if Mage (Good Magic) is only the latest proof that modern trainers can prepare a raw horse even for a challenge as notoriously exacting as the Kentucky Derby, then let's roll back to that summer of '73.

Okay, so Secretariat himself had made nine juvenile starts from July 4. But if you would presume experience to be an asset at Churchill on the first Saturday in May, then how much more crucial should it be for the template itself, the most venerable race of all: the Derby at Epsom, that crazy rollercoaster with its twisting hill? Yet half a century ago, in a field of 25, the race was won on only his second career start by Morston (GB).

He was bred for Classic stamina, at any rate: by St Leger winner Ragusa (Ire) out of an Oaks runner-up (herself by a St Leger runner-up) who had already produced the 1969 Derby winner Blakeney (GB). Ragusa, incidentally, was out of a mare imported from a very old American family that had earlier produced Hard Tack, the sire of Seabiscuit. The St Leger, remember, is run over 14 furlongs. As the Japanese have reminded us, the lifeblood of the Thoroughbred is not brute speed but class: the ability not just to go fast, but to keep going fast.

That is certainly the hallmark of Galileo (Ire), whose legacy saturates the 244th running of the Derby on Saturday. With 93 juveniles and just a dozen yearlings still to come, he is represented by a single son, Artistic Star (Ire), unbeaten for one of the outstanding trainers in Europe yet available at tempting odds. Of the remaining 13 starters, eight are by sons of Galileo (including two by principal heir Frankel {GB}); two are out of his daughters; and one is out of a mare by another of his sons. That leaves just two runners to have bobbed to the surface of a European bloodstock industry that squanders mares, by the thousand, on stallions that cannot remotely satisfy the definition of class given above.

But, yes, the world moves on. Sometimes it just moves on in the wrong direction. It's a pretty dismal reflection on where our sport stands today that its greatest race has been shoehorned into the middle of lunch to avoid the F.A. Cup Final. Because what American readers may not realize is that this particular soccer match, in its heyday, also once brought England to a standstill—but has in recent years, even as the game has boomed, also lost much of its popular traction. With many managers resting star players for this tournament, you might even say that the F.A. Cup has shared the same decline in popular culture as the Derby (for which Parliament itself used to take the day off).

Fixed television schedules are also a thing of the past, with the young especially expecting to do most of their viewing “on demand.” That puts live events at a premium. In Britain, however, broadcasting rights for the most prestigious sporting events—including both the F.A. Cup Final and the Derby—are ringfenced for free channels. (Which obviously invites the paradox that the most coveted events, with no competition from channels with subscription revenue, are least likely to achieve their true market value.) Unusually, the F.A. Cup Final is broadcast simultaneously by both the BBC and ITV. And since the latter also has the rights to the Derby, racing has been unceremoniously shown its place.

By an unmissable irony, the match that has elbowed the Derby aside is being contested by Manchester City and Manchester United. As such, it is what the soccer world knows as a “derby” match between local rivals. The origin of this usage is tenuous, but some have ascribed it to the Epsom race. Horseracing, after all, long precedes football (in all its variations) in popular culture.
Yet now we find the Jockey Club taking out injunctions in anticipation of animal rights protests, even for a race in such innocuous contrast to, for instance, the Grand National. And that is without the current traumas of Churchill Downs having remotely penetrated wider consciousness on that side of the pond.

But let's resist adding another “basso profundo” to the prevailing chorus of miserabilism. Let's hope for another infectiously exciting chapter in the Epsom epic: maybe a final Derby for Dettori, who has already won two of three British Classics on his farewell tour; or perhaps one more for another old master, Sir Michael Stoute.

His runner hadn't even seen a racetrack before Apr. 20. Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Mage! Passenger (Ulysses {Ire}) is actually out of a War Front mare. Fifty years on from Morston, then, perhaps Passenger would be an apt reminder that the more the world changes, the more it stays the same.

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