Gotham Stakes winner Weyburn will not contest the Kentucky Derby on May 1, racing manager Robert Landry told the Daily Racing Form on Monday. Instead, the 3-year-old son of Pioneerof the Nile will start in the G3 Peter Pan Stakes at Belmont Park on May 8 as a prep for the Belmont Stakes on June 5.
“The right thing for the horse is to miss the Derby,” Landry told DRF. “I think (trainer) Jimmy (Jerkens) and I are on the same page with that. I think this horse is going to mature a lot more. The family history is they get better with age.”
Fourth last out in the G2 Wood Memorial, Weyburn is a homebred for Chiefswood Stables. He is out of the unraced A.P. Indy mare Sunday Affair, also the dam of multiple graded stakes-winning sprinter Yorkton and mulitple stakes-placed Nipigon.
Jerkens had suggested Weyburn would be a better fit for the Belmont Stakes even before the horse contested the Wood.
“We kind of have that in the back of our head that we'd more apt to aim for something like that than the Derby,” Jerkens told NYRA publicity. “He's a horse that takes some time to get used to new places. He's high maintenance in that regard. We'd like to stretch the year out a little more.”
Read more at the Daily Racing Form.
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