The Kentucky Derby is just 4 weeks away, and this Saturday features two of the main preps for that race, the Wood Memorial in New York and the Santa Anita Derby in California. As to the first race, Bellamy Road won. But he didn't just win. He pretty much embarrassed the competition and destroyed records in the process. He set a record for the stakes, and more or less equaled the record for the TRACK (I say more or less since they didn't time races in hundreths of a second back when the record was set in 1973). He beat Survivalist, winner of the Gotham Stakes and the horse who placed, by an enormous 17 1/2 lengths.
Bellamy Road is just one of the many top Kentucky Derby hopefuls that are trained by Nick Zito. Zito also trains High Fly and Noble Causeway (the 1-2 finishers in last week's Florida Derby) and the highly touted Sun King. He's owned by (insert the Darth Vader music) George Steinbrenner.
The Santa Anita Derby turned out to be a rather less remarkable affair - unless you had a bet on the winner, a 30-1 shot named Buzzards Bay. The race featured two of the big names of this class from last year - Breeders Cup Juvenile winner Wilko, and Sweet Catomine, the 2004 Eclipse Award winner - but they finished third and fifth, respectively.
Posted by armand at April 9, 2005 07:41 PM | TrackBack | Posted to Sports