Kentucky Derby updates
Kentucky Derby as racing heads to it’s final big week of qualifying that there is no overwhelming favorite to win the most famous horse race in the world.
Saturday was supposed to help define the field but instead saw the favorites in the Florida Derby and Arkansas Derby lose. For most of the horses, it was their first time going 1 1/8 miles, a furlong short of the 1 ¼-mile Kentucky Derby.
Of course, winning your last race before the Kentucky Derby is no guarantee for success as you have to go back to 2017 when Always Dreaming won both the Florida Derby and Kentucky Derby. That is if you discount Justify’s performance in the Santa Anita Derby before winning the Triple Crown in 2018.
Justify crossed the finish line first in the Santa Anita Derby but was disqualified six years later when it was determined that the California Horse Racing Board mishandled a contamination positive on the colt. Justify, along with six other horses among five trainers, tested positive for jimson weed, which it was believed the horses ingested in their feed. No trainer was sanctioned.
Luxor Cafe, an American Pharoah full-brother to Grade 1 winner and sire Cafe Pharoah, nailed down a guaranteed bid to return home for the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby with an emphatic five-length victory in the Fukuryu Stakes at Nakayama Racecourse on Saturday for trainer Noriyuki Hori and owner Koichi Nishikawa.
Bred by Coolmore-associated Orpendale, Chelston, Wynatt, and Westerberg Ireland he is a son of the Triple Crown winner American Pharoah and a full-brother to the aforementioned Cafe Pharoah, twice successful in the Grade 1 February Stakes. Now an eight-year-old he is standing his second season at Arrow Stud in Japan.
The colts are half-brothers to the 2022 Eclipse champion female turf horse Regal Glory, a quadruple Grade 1 winner by Animal Kingdom, and to the Grade 3 winner Night Prowler, a son of Giant’s Causeway.
Their dam, Mary’s Follies, is a Grade 3 winner by More Than Ready and has now produced seven winners from eight runners. She has a two-year-old colt by Into Mischief who made $550,000 to John McCormack Bloodstock at last September’s Keeneland Sale.
The 1,800m (about one-and-one-eighth miles) Fukuryu was the final leg of the Churchill Downs-sponsored Japan Road to the Kentucky Derby. Luxor Cafe came into the race already atop the leaderboard in that four-race series and the victory made his final tally every bit as wide as his winning margin over 10 outclassed rivals in the finale.
Luxor Cafe’s connections did not immediately confirm plans but the Kentucky-bred colt is nominated to the United States Triple Crown series and the Fukuryu effort left little doubt he would be able to handle the added furlong of the Run for the Roses.
The victory was Luxor Cafe‘s fourth in a row, following a fourth and a second at Sapporo to open his career last year. He did not contest the first two legs of the Japan Road but took the lead in the series with a victory in the Hyacinth Stakes at Tokyo Racecourse in February
Forever Young won the second leg of the last series, the 2023 Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun, but then took the Middle Eastern route, winning in both Saudi Arabia and Dubai before his epic third-place finish behind Mystik Dan and Sierra Leone in the Kentucky Derby.
