Whitney Handicap – Giant Oak joins the league of Grade 1 winners for the Saratoga meet
Chris Block trained Giant Oak has had an on and off career, mostly off but he is still a grade 1 winner, twice, and that too back to back.
The five-year-old horse braces himself for Saratoga, as his inclusion in the Grade 1 $750,000 Whitney Handicap on 6 August seems possible.
The Whitney Handicap at Saratoga has reeled in other graded stakes winners. The likes of Mission Impazible, Rodman, and Sidney’s Candy are making the line-up for the grade 1 clash.
The Chicago based trainer, Chris Block informed that his horse Giant Oak has been shipped from Arlington early because he wanted him to get familiar with the race tracks and mainly breeze out a few workouts on the Saratoga’s main track.
Giant Oak’s connections seem to have a good feeling about the Whitney Handicap, and that Chris Block doesn’t know where to run the horse other than at Saratoga.
Giant Oak has responded to a race of this stature before, and he seems to soak up the pressure when things are set up for him.
Success rate of Giant Oak is on the lower side, since winning the Grade 1 Donn Handicap on 5 February, he has had three races to run, and out of those he managed a single 3rd place finish and two fifth place finish.
He finished third in the Grade 2 New Orleans Handicap at the Fair Grounds race track on 26 March.
Under jockey S Bridgmohan, who guided the horse to his previous two grade 1 victories, roused him to finish third behind Apart and Mission Impazible at a distance of 1 1/8 miles.
Then it was down to Churchill Downs where he bagged his first Grade 1 race in the Clark Handicap.
This time around it was nothing like before, as Giant Oak under his usual ride S Bridgmohan found it difficult to keep track of the leaders and finished a disappointing fifth.
He met the same fate in terms of finishing in the Grade 1 Stephen Foster Handicap, dismal performance in the race squandered his chances to finish on the cards and fell away to finish fifth in the 1 1/8 mile event on dirt.
Despite the poor run of form lately, it is true that he hasn’t been shown a real race where he could get off the blocks and just run to the wire.
Half the time Giant Oak has hit the wall in many races where he had been trafficked out of the race.
The horse looks good when he runs outside because he shows lots of speed, he can come out of the post fairly quick which is also a plus and he can be held off in the beginning because he can disguise his pace well.
All of these attributes might help the five-year-old in the Whitney Handicap, give the plan comes together on the day.
Tags: