Three-year-olds Daddy Forty Nine
and Walking the Beach are unlikely to move on to the Jan. 23 Grade III
Lecomte Stakes, the first race in Fair Grounds’ Road to the Derby series, after
finishing out of the money in Sunday’s allowance feature won by Stay Put.
Trainer Tom Amoss attempted to
take the blame for Daddy Forty Nine’s even sixth-place finish, in which the
Ghostzapper gelding was in a suitable striking position entering the stretch
but flattened out in the final quarter-mile.
“I’d like to see him a little bit more
relaxed than he was,” Amoss said. “Unfortunately, that’s probably my fault with
the way I trained him. When he runs back look for him to be a more laid-back
horse early. It was trainer error and that happens.”
Sunday’s effort ended a four-race
winning streak for Daddy Forty Nine compiled at four different tracks: Arlington
Park,
Keeneland, Churchill Downs and Delta Downs.
Amoss reported that Daddy Forty Nine,
owned by the Last Mango Racing Stable (a syndicate led by New Orleans
Saints Vice President of Communications Greg Bensel that also includes
quarterback Drew Brees and Monday Night Football broadcasters Mike
Tirico, Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski, as well as
singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffet, among others), came back from the race
“fine” and will look for “a spot similar to (Sunday’s), probably in about three
weeks or so.”
As for Cobra Cooper Racing’s ninth-place
finisher Walking the Beach, trainer Bret Calhoun was still searching for
answers as to why the Medaglia d’Oro colt, an easy debut winner at Churchill
Downs in November, never fired Sunday.
“It was almost like he just got lost,”
Calhoun said. “He broke good and was in good position, but Miguel (Mena,
jockey) said he never tried. He came back good. He barely drank any water, cooled
out good, was bouncing like he never ran. I don’t have any explanation for his
poor performance except maybe second-time out and maybe he got lost a little
bit going two turns for the first time. It was a pretty disappointing
performance.”
Calhoun reiterated that Walking the
Beach had missed some scheduled training in December due to record rainfall
that month and wasn’t quite as far along in his conditioning as the trainer had
hoped. Nonetheless, nobody foresaw him only beating one horse Sunday.
“I didn’t think he had to win it but I
thought he’d run a good race,” Calhoun said. “We’ll just go back in the next
two-turn allowance spot now and regroup. We’re not going to go into the Lecomte
off that kind of race.”
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