The last year’s Breeder Cup Juvenile Turf hero Pluck is back at Churchill Downs for the Commonwealth Turf
After an emphatic win in the last year’s Grade 2 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, the 3-year-old Graham Motion trained Pluck seemed to have all the ingredients to be the next big thing in horse racing, but sadly the colt has done nothing to tip the bar he set
last year.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t perform well in the 2011 season, it was a matter of getting a bone bruising in his hind cannon bones which hindered his 2011 season.
Though the 3-year-old was able to participate in the two races earlier this year, but both of them ended in disappointment when he tried his luck in an allowance race at Tampa Bay run over a distance of a mile on 12 March, 2011.
Team Valor International’s Pluck finished fourth behind the winner Lil Bit O’fun, runner up Marco’s Fling and third place finisher Tag V Eye.
It was a month later that Pluck was pointed toward the Grade 3 Transylvania Stakes at Keeneland, under his Breeders’ Cup winning jockey Garrett Gomez. The pair failed to make an impact in the Transylvania Stakes over at 1 1/16 miles and 8 April, the pair
finished a distant seventh while Air Support notched the race with the winning time of 1 minute and 41.99 seconds.
The Kentucky bred son of More Than Ready, out of Secret Heart by Fort Wood, Pluck returns to familiar setting when he makes his next start in the eighth running of the Grade 3, $100,000 Commonwealth Turf at Churchill Downs.
Though he is not back in a Breeders’ Cup race but he will be trying to reprise a happy Breeders’ Cup theme when he runs in the 1 1/16 mile long turf race open for 3-year-old colts and geldings on 3 November, 2011 at Churchill Downs.
In the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf last fall, Pluck showed an amazing turn of foot when he rallied from far back and got himself into contention with a sparkling run for the wire.
However, a full body scan after those two disappointing starts in his 3-year-old career revealed the bruising but it’s good to have the runner back in action after a long layoff.
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