Potential Preakness new shooters breeze
From a Maryland Jockey Club release
Collected, Stradivari and Uncle Lino, a trio of new faces to the Triple Crown campaign expected to start in the Preakness, had their final serious tune-ups Friday morning.
Speedway Stable’s Collected worked seven furlongs in 1:24.80 over a track labeled as “good” at Churchill Downs. Ridden by Miguel Mena, Collected broke off at the five-eighths pole and produced fractions of 23.80 seconds, 35.80, 47.80, 1:00 and 1:12.60. The Lexington (G3) winner galloped out a mile in 1:38.60.
“I’d say we are ready. We’re good to go,” said Jim Barnes, assistant to six-time Preakness winner Bob Baffert. “Bob wanted a good seven-eighths and out-a-mile, and he did it pretty handily.”
Collected is scheduled to fly to Baltimore on Tuesday.
Todd Pletcher-trained Stradivari, who is scheduled to make his stakes debut in the Preakness, breezed five furlongs in 59.60 seconds over a fast track at Belmont Park.
“He worked very well. I’m very pleased with the way he went. He’s had three very good breezes since his allowance win and right now we’re still considering the Preakness,” Pletcher said.
The 3-year-old son of Medaglia d’Oro broke his maiden at Gulfstream Park in his second career start Dec. 5 before returning off a four-month layoff to handily vanquish first-level allowance runners by 14 ½ lengths April 17 at Keeneland.
“He’s a horse that we’ve thought a lot of for quite a while, so it was sort of in the back of our minds leading up to the allowance race that hopefully bigger things were to come,” Pletcher said. “We were expecting a good effort but that even exceeded our expectations. Once he did that and came out of it well the Preakness became a consideration.”
Uncle Lino, who set a track record at Los Alamitos while winning the 1 1/16-mile California Chrome Stakes in 1:40.82 April 30, breezed five furlongs at Santa Anita in 1:00.80 Friday morning.
Trained by Gary Sherlock, the son of Uncle Mo, who previously finished third behind Exaggerator in the Santa Anita Derby (G1), is scheduled to ship from Southern California to Pimlico Tuesday.
