Gotham: Giant Moon seeks to raise profile

With War Pass targeting the Tampa Bay Derby and Pyro the Louisiana Derby the coming weeks in the three-year-old division will be particularly interesting. First, Saturday’s Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct, the next objective for undefeated New York-bred Giant Moon, and an upwardly mobile colt with the potential to assert himself as one of the leading contenders in this group. This week’s ranking:

War Pass
Pyro
Cool Coal Man
Court Vision
Giant Moon
Colonel John
Dennis of Cork
Fierce Wind
El Gato Malo
Tale of Ekati
Elysium Fields
Majestic Warrior

Pistol Pete comes out of retirement

Having more or less exhausted the supply of active trainers willing to work for his family-owned racing enterprise, Ernie Paragallo has reached out to Peter Ferriola, who has been retired since 2001, to take over Paraneck Stable. It is not clear when Ferriola, three times the leading trainer in New York, will assume his duties, but if this doesn’t work, and obviously Ferriola does not need the job, Paragallo, whose relationships with trainers have been generally short-lived and at times acrimonious, may find himself out of options.

Wednesday pick-six frenzy at Aqueduct

A $265,874 pick-six carryover will result in a pool of over $1-million on Wednesday at Aqueduct, which returns to a 1 p.m. first post this week. Most mid-winter Wednesday racing card at Aqueduct are, for lack of a better term, challenging. Three maiden races, two restricted to New York-breds, two allowance races and an open claiming race are included in the sequence. We will attempt to put together a reasonable ticket in this space on Wednesday morning.

Revealing study by California group

The outspoken watchdog group, California Thoroughbred Breeders Association Boardwatch, has completed a study of Barretts March Sale graduates since 1999 which had posted the fastest preview works at one, two and three furlongs to determine how successfully “these rocket fueled youngsters” performed as racehorses.

CONCLUSION: Without taking into account other factors--such as pedigree, buyer, trainer, and racetrack surface--we have concluded that while some of the fastest workouts were strong indicators of profit-making racehorses (e.g. Officer, Brother Derek, Queenie Belle, Dubai Escapade, Henny Hughes and others), the vast majority of these high potential thoroughbreds proved failures as racehorses.

Moreover, we think this study proves that horses which perform at such a high rate of speed so early in their lives do not enjoy long careers. Time after time, we found horses who showed great talent in Barretts' previews which later started only two or three times in their lives.

Thus, we conclude that the horses which work fastest in Barretts' previews (and probably all other similar auctions) are most likely to incur premature physical and/or mental problems which ultimately result in early retirements, diminished potential, or breakdowns. (Note: The $16-million The Green Monkey, now retired with about $10,000 in earnings, was sold at age two after a fast preview work at a Florida sale.)