NEWS
Hard Spun could breeze Wednesday morning
Posted: Tuesday, May 15, 2007 12:13 PM
HARD SPUN
Lou Hodges Jr. photo
by Ed DeRosa
Rick Porter’s Hard Spun figures to have a busy Wednesday.
Trainer Larry Jones said that the Kentucky Derby Presented by Yum! Brands (G1) runner-up could breeze on Wednesday morning at Delaware Park before he is vanned to Pimlico Race Course at noon.
Jones galloped Hard Spun 1 1/2 miles after the renovation break on Tuesday at Delaware Park. The three-year-old Danzig colt will look to turn the tables on Street Sense in the Preakness Stakes (G1) on Saturday.
“He came out of the Derby better than I anticipated,” Jones said. “I thought a race like that would tire him, and if that didn’t tire him, then I thought the ten-hour van ride would.
“We might breeze him [Wednesday]—ease him down the lane and let him get into the bit a little bit because he’s pretty fresh.”
Jones said that he has arranged for jockey Mario Pino to put the Danzig colt through his morning exercises on Wednesday. The trainer also hopes to create a stir among the media if he does decide to work.
“None of the media has criticized me since the Derby, so I’m getting worried,” Jones said. “Everyone criticized us when we pulled out of the [Toyota] Blue Grass [Stakes (G1)] and talked about skipping the Derby. Then no one liked our one-mile work on Polytrack … then we worked him too fast before the Derby. I’m starting to get the heebie-jeebies that no one’s criticized me.”
There has not been much to criticize. Hard Spun has won five of seven starts, including four stakes, and has earned $873,470. His only finish worse than second came when he finished fourth in the Southwest Stakes at Oaklawn Park, a surface Jones said the colt did not like.
“It was a big issue that he didn’t like Oaklawn because a lot of horses who don’t like Oaklawn don’t like Churchill,” Jones said. “He’s run well everywhere, but after [the Southwest] I wondered if he needed to take his track with him. He worked :57.60 at Churchill easy, but the work in :59 at Oaklawn was work. We really had to ask him to do that.”
Following Hard Spun’s performance at Churchill, Jones has learned to view Oaklawn more as an aberration rather than a concern, and he is especially happy to have a local jockey piloting his horse at Pimlico.
Jones and Pino have yet to discuss specific strategies for the Preakness Stakes (G1) on Saturday, but Jones said he would expect Hard Spun to track Derby Trial Stakes winner Flying First Class.
“Mario knows his way around Pimlico, and our style normally suits the Preakness,” Jones said. “Speedsters have a better chance: the turns are different and speed holds. Flying First Class is extremely fast. I’d be shocked if he weren’t on the engine, but if they give us the lead then we’ll take it.”
Hard Spun notched his first four career victories racing on or within a head of the lead, but he came from just off the pace to win the Lane’s End Stakes (G2).
Ed DeRosa is news editor of Thoroughbred Times
