Sabercat pointed toward the Rebel Stakes for his seasonal debut
The 3-year-old colt, Sabercat, who broke his maiden special weight race at fourth asking at Monmouth Park, never looked back from there as the Steven Asmussen trained colt landed back to back stakes races including a graded stakes race last year. Now the Winchell Thoroughbreds owned colt is pointed toward the Grade 2, $500,000 Rebel Stakes to open his account of the new campaign on 17 March, 2012, at Oaklawn Park over a distance of 1 1/16 miles.
The Winchell and Asmussen families have been doing business for the past three decades, and the father of Steven Asmussen, Keith Asmussen have literally given first training lessons to Winchell owned Thoroughbreds at his training center in Laredo, Texas.
Now Steven Asmussen is carrying the torch and in the past the veteran trainer has helped horses like Pyro, Cuvee and Summerly to become major stakes winners.
The current marquee horse the families share is the Kentucky bred son of Bluegrass Cat, out of mare Miner’s Blessing by Forty Niner, Sabercat, who has already shown as a juvenile the potential he possesses to go over a range of distances and can leave his mark on different tracks all over the country.
Being the Kentucky Derby prospect, the above mentioned qualities will highly favour him come the Kentucky Derby, but he will have a taste of it as early in March, when he goes against a potential Derby lineup in the Rebel Stakes, with horses like Secret Circle, Castaway, Majestic Stride, Jake Mo, Reckless Jerry and many others participating in the Rebel Stakes.
The 1 1/16 mile race has reeled in 14 runners, who are expected to go on to run in the Kentucky Derby, or the other two legs of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes.
However, Sabercat will be using the Rebel Stakes as one of two prep races for the all important Grade 1 Kentucky Derby, and the other will be the Grade 1, $1 million Arkansas Derby.
He was never short of graded stakes earnings, as he made himself eligible for the Kentucky Derby when he won the Grade 3 Delta Downs Jackpot, at Delta Downs as a juvenile.
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