NEWS
Silver Wagon powerful winner of Carter Handicap
Posted: Saturday, April 07, 2007 7:38 PM
SILVER WAGON
Adam Coglianese/NYRA photo
by Jeff Apel
Multiple Grade 1 winner Silver Wagon made a triumphant return to Aqueduct on Saturday by drawing clear in the closing strides of a powerful stretch drive en route to a 1 1/4-length win in the $300,000 Carter Handicap (G1).
Silver Wagon and jockey Javier Castellano rallied from third in early stretch, powering past runner-up Diabolical, and less than a half-length behind pacesetter Latent Heat. The win was the second victory in three career starts at the Jamaica, New York, track for Silver Wagon, the winner of the 2006 Sport Page Breeders’ Cup Handicap (G3) at Aqueduct who began his current campaign in Florida.
“I had a lot of confidence that he was going to run a big race,” winning trainer Richard Dutrow Jr. said. “He’s been training lights out since we got back from Florida.
“Down there, he didn’t want to train. As soon as I got him back here, he runs to the track. I just can’t figure it out.”
Silver Wagon dropped more than nine lengths off the pace and raced in fifth for a half-mile as Latent Heat led the field of six through fractions of :21.76 for a quarter-mile and :44.34 for a half-mile. Positioned three wide, Silver Wagon gained command on the outside of multiple Grade 1-placed stakes winner Diabolical and jockey Cornelio Velasquez and won the seven-furlong race in 1:21.46 on a fast track.
“They went very, very fast. It was a key to the race, because it set up perfectly for me,” Castellano said. “Cornelio and I hooked up together at the eighth pole, and my horse finished good.”
Multiple graded stakes-placed stakes winner Ah Day finished third, three-quarters of a length behind Diabolical.
Dutrow mentioned the $600,000 Metropolitan Handicap (G1) on May 28 at Belmont Park as the next possible start for Silver Wagon. The Wagon Limit horse opened his current campaign with a third-place finish in the Sunshine Millions Classic Stakes on January 27 at Gulfstream Park.
Four Roses Thoroughbreds’s Silver Wagon earned his seventh win in 24 career starts in five seasons and increased his earnings to $1,159,193. Bred in Florida, the gray or roan horse is out of So Ritzy, by Darn That Alarm.
For an Equibase chart, click here.
Jeff Apel is a Thoroughbred Times assistant daily news editor
