Alastor Wakes Up a Sleepy Race
The field for Saturday’s Grade II Sleepy Fan Stakes for three year olds looked unspectacular at first, with only one runner coming into the race with a top twenty five rating. By the end of the day, though, the race just might turn out to be a key one for the Bluegrass Derby.
Picking up his fourth straight win and improving his record to five wins in eight tries, the Marinia trained Alastor remains undefeated as a three year old. The performance vaulted him to a 15th ranking among three year olds at a classic distance, up from 39th. It puts him in the running to make the Triple Jewel races which use the rankings to limit the fields to 20 runners.
Alastor fell back early, running twelfth for much of the race before making a charge that left no doubt about which horse was dominant today. He was the only one who was able to mount a rally in what appeared to be a speed favoring surface.
Also making an impressive showing was the place horse, Privileged, out of the Saver barn. Privileged had already established himself as a top sprinter, but his impressive run here shows he can get a distance and moved him to a number 19 ranking.
Black Clown, trained by Semi3, maintained his number eight ranking by finishing third. Black Clown has continued to show improvement in his recent runs, and the second place horse in last year’s Breeders Bowl Juvenile has a chance to have just as a good a three year old campaign as he had as a two year old. Presumably, Black Clown has a place in the
The trainers of the top two colts have interesting decisions to make. The Bluegrass Derby is six weeks from now. Alastor has been running every four to five weeks. If he or Privileged don’t run before that, they run the risk of others earning enough points to edge them out of the top twenty rankings. If they choose to run again, there is the Grade II Heat Less Stakes in