Photo: NYRA, Adam Coglianese
Grade 1 winner Zo Impressive was resting comfortably in her stall Sunday morning, the day
after suffering a condylar fracture in her right front leg running fourth behind
Questing in the Grade 1, $600,000 Alabama Stakes.
Trainer Tom Albertrani said the
gray daughter of Hard Spun will be sent this week to the
Rood & Riddle
Equine Center
in Lexington ,
Ky., for surgery to repair the damage, after
which a decision will be made on her racing future.
“She’s actually getting around
the stall pretty good,” Albertrani said. “She’s just in a pressure bandage right
now. It’s amazing. She had a good night. She’s standing square in her stall and
she’s got her head out. She doesn’t seem stressed out at all about it.
“We’ll ship her to
Kentucky in the next
couple of days. She’s got a condylar fracture, but fortunately it didn’t go
spiraling up the leg. It kind of just displaced right off the bottom. We’ll see
how surgery goes and go from there.”
Zo Impressive has been first or
second in six of her seven lifetime starts, winning the Grade 1 Mother Goose at
Belmont
Park on June 23. She was
runner-up to Alabama winner Questing in the
Grade 1 TVG Coaching Club American Oaks at
Saratoga on July 21.
“She’s got a good nature about
her,” Albertrani said. “If you look at her, she acts like there’s nothing wrong
with her. She ought to be a good patient. It should hopefully be a simple
procedure and she comes out of it OK. We’ll see what the next steps are.”
Meanwhile, Albertrani was pleased
with the effort of Brilliant Speed, who ran third, beaten 6 ½ lengths, by
Point of Entry in Saturday’s Grade 1 Sword Dancer Invitational.
“He came out of the race good,”
Albertrani said. “It looked like [jockey Javier Castellano] had a lot more
horse. I was hoping he would kind of give him just a little bit more rein. I
thought he might have wanted to be a bit closer, but he ran well. We had no
excuse.”
Since moving back to the turf,
Brilliant Speed has placed in three Grade 1 stakes. He ran fifth, beaten just
two lengths, in the Grade 1 Woodford Reserve Manhattan and most recently
finished sixth behind Turbo Compressor in the Grade 1 United Nations.
“He kind of made up for the
United Nations,” Albertrani said. “That was really his only bad one during the
year. He’s always two lengths here, three lengths there. In all of his starts,
he’s been right there. We’ll try them again somewhere. One of these days, he’s
going to break through.”