On the road to the Kentucky Derby, there will be action this Saturday at Tampa Bay Downs
TAMPA, Florida (Special for Turf Diario).- It could be argued that 3-year-old colt Owen Almighty has been the hard-luck horse of the current Tampa Bay Downs meet.
He finished a length ahead of Naughty Rascal on Jan. 11 in the Pasco Stakes, but was disqualified and placed fifth for coming in and bumping Rookie Card near the 3/8-mile pole, giving the victory to Naughty Rascal.
Stretching out from 7 furlongs to a mile-and-a-sixteenth, Owen Almighty ran an even better race on Feb. 8 in the Sam F. Davis Stakes, only to come up a half-length short against trainer Brad Cox’s John Hancock after a riveting stretch duel.
Brian Lynch, the trainer of Owen Almighty, won’t go so far as to say Tampa Bay Downs owes Owen Almighty one. But he has no doubt the Flying Dutchmen Breeding and Racing-owned star deserves a chance to prove his quality in Saturday’s 45th running of the Grade III, $400,000-guaranteed Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby with Irad Ortiz, Jr., again in the saddle.
Chances are, Owen Almighty will again need to be at the top of his game to earn the victory. He will face the 1-2 Chad Brown-trained duo of Chancer McPatrick, a two-time Grade I winner as a 2-year-old who is ranked No. 4 on Byron King’s BloodHorse Top 12 Derby Dozen Presented by Spendthrift, and No. 11-ranked Hill Road, who finished third last fall at Del Mar in the FanDuel Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Presented by Thoroughbred Aftercare Alliance.
And, for good measure, he will again face Oldsmar trainer Gerald Bennett’s Florida-bred colt Naughty Rascal – who briefly threatened the Sam F. Davis top two on the turn for home before dropping back to sixth – as well as three others.
Lynch believes his horse is up for the challenge.
“He (Owen Almighty) is coming out of his last race as good as we could have hoped, and he has trained on well since that race,” said Lynch, who won the then-Grade II Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby and then-Grade III Sam F. Davis in 2022 with Classic Causeway. “So we’re excited about bringing him back to Tampa to give him another try.”
While Cox elected to give John Hancock more time before his next start, Lynch is confident Owen Almighty can handle the demands of another high-level race four weeks after the Sam F. Davis.
“There’s always a concern when a horse runs as hard as he did, but he may have had more race experience (than John Hancock) to absorb it a little better,” said Lynch, who plans to send Owen Almighty from his Palm Meadows Training Center base in Boynton Beach to Oldsmar the morning of the race. “He’s given us every sort of vibe to say ‘let’s have another go.’”
The Lambholm South Tampa Bay Derby awards 50 points to the winner on the “Road to the Kentucky Derby” series determining the 20 qualifiers for the Run for the Roses on May 3. The mile-and-a-sixteenth event on the Oldsmar main track is one of five stakes races on a 12-race card beginning at noon Saturday.
Comentários