Todd Pletcher’s quality 2-year-old crop will be prominent in next year’s Derby prep races
The 2013 edition of the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in May is more than five months away, but for someone who has the quality to have a real good chance of winning; it isn’t that far, especially for a trainer like Todd Pletcher, who has an
excellent 2-year-old crop.
The horseman will be eyeing all the prep races leading up the Kentucky Derby on 4 May, 2013, on the “Road to the Derby” next year, and there will be not one in which he isn’t participating.
Overanalyze’s victory in the Grade 2, $250,000 Remsen Stakes bolstered Pletcher’s confidence to have another contender for the Kentucky Derby in addition to the undefeated and Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner, Shanghai Bobby, and the Nashua winner,
Violence.
Apart from these three, who will really make Pletcher’s case strong in the coming prep races, the veteran trainer has a bevy of maiden winners at his disposal, and after the Remsen Stakes victory his tally has gone up to 56 victories in 2-year-old races
this year, with sixteen of 56 coming in stakes races, and 10 in graded stakes events.
There is no doubt - with the quality 2-year-old contingent - Todd Pletcher will be the centre of attraction when the prep races for the Kentucky Derby kick start coming January.
Todd Pletcher has participated in 12 Kentucky Derbies since 2000, and has gone on to win just once. “Oh without a doubt; get a bunch of nice horses expectations are high,” said Pletcher. “We had a great Saratoga with a lot of 2-year-olds running well. It
doesn’t always mean it’s going to continue on, but so far it has. We won a lot of important 2-year-old races, so we’ll get them down [to Florida] and try to figure out where most of them are going to start.”
This time around though, horses will not make it to the Kentucky Derby based on their graded stakes earnings, gone are those days, entre the new qualifying system for the Kentucky Derby which enable the first four of any graded stakes event for three-year-olds
to earn points, and on that basis they will make the Kentucky Derby gate next year at the Louisville oval.
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