Welcome back, fellow racing fans, to Triple Crown Countdown! After a solid five months of Breeders' Cup excitement, it's time to turn our focus to the up-and-coming young horses that will dominate the headlines through the first Saturday in May and beyond.
This week seems like a good place to get started, since Saturday's racing action includes the $1,000,000 Delta Downs Jackpot Stakes (gr. III) at Delta Downs, a race won last year by eventual Santa Anita Derby (gr. I) winner Goldencents, with Preakness Stakes (gr. I) second- and third-place finishers Itsmyluckyday and Mylute finishing sixth and third, respectively. In addition, with the race offering a total of seventeen Kentucky Derby qualifications points (ten to the winner, four to the runner-up, two to third, and one to fourth), the Delta Downs Jackpot is an especially logical place to open our coverage of the 2014 Triple Crown season.
Without further ado, let's begin!
Delta Downs Jackpot Stakes (gr. III)
1 1/16th miles at Delta Downs
Entries:
1 Whyruawesome
2 Coastline
3 Roman Unbridled
4 Mighty Brown
5 Rum Point
6 Flat Gone
7 Rankhasprivileges
8 Casiguapo
9 Big Bazinga
10 Rise Up
The morning line favorite at 5-2 is trainer Mark Casse's promising colt Coastline, who has already made a very good impression from just three starts. After finishing second in his debut to the well-regarded colt Almost Famous, Coastline stepped up to break his maiden going seven furlongs on the Keeneland Polytrack, then wheeled right back on three weeks rest to win the one-mile Street Sense Stakes at Churchill Downs by three lengths. Finishing third that day was Ride On Curlin, a promising colt that had previously run a close third in the Champagne Stakes (gr. I) behind Havana and Honor Code, two of the most promising young colts of the year thus far.
What made Coastline's effort in the Street Sense especially notable was his final quarter, which he ran in :24.37 seconds. That's a very sharp time for a two-year-old, and signals that he should have no trouble stretching out another sixteenth of a mile.
However, the Delta Downs Jackpot will mark his first start around two turns, and the turns at Delta are very tight. For that reason, I believe that Rise Up will be able to offer Coastline a very serious challenge. Trained by Tom Amoss, Rise Up broke his maiden second time out before winning the Mountaineer Juvenile Stakes in his third start. His next start came in the Iroquois Stakes (gr. III) at Churchill Downs, where he helped set a fast pace before tiring to finish sixth. A more settled run in the one-mile Jean Lafitte Stakes here at Delta Downs yielded his most impressive performance to date, a 6 1/2-length victory in 1:38.20. Having already proven his affinity for the racing surface, Rise Up may have a bit of an edge over Coastline, despite having to break from the far outside post position.
Another very intriguing entrant is Casiguapo, who ran second in the Hopeful Stakes (gr. I) at Saratoga two starts back before winding up a distant fourth in the Champagne Stakes (gr. I) at Belmont, which we already mentioned above in regard to the extremely high talent level of the top two finishers. Finishing fourth in a race of that caliber was by no means a disgrace, and Casiguapo should appreciate the drop in class from grade I to grade III level.
Trainer Doug O'Neill won this race last year with Goldencents, and will send out Rum Point for this year's edition. Now, Rum Point is coming off of the worst performance of his career -- a twelfth-place finish in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile (gr. I), beaten nearly twenty lengths -- but it's important to note that he chased a very solid pace for three-quarters of a mile, and should find the pace much easier to deal with today. As a result, I would expect him to improve substantially on Saturday, perhaps even enough to contend for the top spot.
Mighty Brown and Flat Gone finished second and third, respectively, in the Jean Lafitte Stakes behind Rise Up, although the former did finish 7 1/4 lengths clear of the latter. It's encouraging that both horses have experience here at Delta, but both would have to step up a few notches to challenge for those elusive Kentucky Derby qualifications points.
Speaking of Derby points, Big Bazinga has already earned four of them, having placed second in the Grey Stakes (gr. III) at Woodbine last time out, beaten just a half-length. The Delta Downs Jackpot will mark his first start on dirt, but he does have a great deal of experience around two-turns, and top jockey Rosie Napravnik has been secured to ride him, both of which are very encouraging signs.
Rankhasprivileges has only run once, breaking his maiden going a mile and a sixteenth over the Keeneland Polytrack, but this Kenny McPeek-trained son of Einstein was very impressive despite racing greenly, and will be running on Lasix for the first time. Whether he can win a race of this magnitude in just his second start -- and his first on dirt -- is open to debate, but the talent is definitely there, and he has done the majority of his training on the dirt at Churchill Downs. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this colt progresses further down the road.
Rounding out the field are Whyruawesome and Roman Unbridled. The former is graded stakes-placed, having finished second in the Arlington-Washington Futurity (gr. III) earlier this year, but his last two starts have been a bit disappointing, and this will be his first run on dirt. Roman Unbridled required four starts to break his maiden, finally doing so here at Delta Downs, then ran fourth in the Jean Lafitte Stakes, beaten sixteen lengths.
Selections: Rise Up, Coastline, Rankhasprivileges, Rum Point
-Keelerman
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