I hope everyone is having themselves a nice Easter. I've been traveling around Yorkshire the past couple of days and will be heading back down to London early next week for my final few days in England. I'll be attending Ascot on Wednesday and the Guineas Festival on Saturday and Sunday.
A few thoughts on this Sunday evening...or morning/afternoon...depending on where you are at:
-
Silver Medallion comes up with a clunker in the Coolmore Lexington, finishing fourth of six and leaving himself short on graded earning for this year's Derby; he'll need some defections to get into the top 20.
I'll update the 2011 Triple Crown file in the next day or so but the results of the Lexington are pretty irrelevant in terms of the Derby. - The Lexington winner, Derby Kitten, is another of those Ken and Sarah Ramsey Kitten's Joy runners that seems to love both turf and synthetic surfaces.
- Churchill Downs opens for racing this coming Saturday and will feature the G3-Derby Trial...which really isn't a trial for the Derby.
- The Rainbow Six at Gulfstream paid out $3,279.26 on second to last day of the meet and the final day for the carryover that kept carrying over day after day. The final Rainbow Six pool checked in at a hair under $3.6 million. Not bad for a $0.10 minimum bet.
- Todd Pletcher's Cal Nation tried stakes company in yesterday's G2-Jerome at Aqueduct and completely bombed, finishing last in a field of eight. I'm not sure what happened to this colt, but after a nice debut win at Gulfstream he's really struggled. Perhaps it's a bit of too much, too fast.