Photo by Z - Benoit & Associates photo
STREET SENSE, left, and GREAT HUNTER
Photo by Z - Benoit & Associates photo
by Jeff Lowe
Street Sense and Great Hunter, who traded Grade 1 wins as two-year-olds last fall, will cross paths again on Saturday in a final stop leading into the spring classics in the $750,000 Toyota Blue Grass Stakes (G1) at Keeneland Race Course.
Great Hunter won the Lane’s End Breeders’ Futurity (G1) at Keeneland on October 7 in the first Grade 1 race ever run on a synthetic surface. The Aptitude colt is back in Lexington for the first Polytrack edition of the Blue Grass, the signature race of the Keeneland spring meet.
Street Sense finished third in the Breeders’ Futurity, before igniting for a ten-length victory in the Bessemer Trust Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (G1) on November at Churchill Downs 4, which earned him the Eclipse Award as champion two-year-old male. Great Hunter finished third in the Juvenile, 12 ¼ lengths behind Street Sense.
Great Hunter and Street Sense have both raced once since the Juvenile. Great Hunter won the Robert B. Lewis Stakes (G2) on March 3 at Santa Anita Park, two weeks before Street Sense edged Any Given Saturday by a nose after a prolonged stretch duel in the Tampa Bay Derby (G3).
Trainer Carl Nafzger was pleased that Street Sense did not have it easy in his first start in more than four months.
“We needed that race,” Nafzger said. “I was scared Any Given Saturday would burst away from us and we’d come down the lane five or six lengths behind him and not get the race we needed. I knew when they hooked up that we’d get the race we needed. He needed a tough race.”
Nafzger has been pointing Street Sense to the Blue Grass since the Juvenile, even though the race has not produced a Kentucky Derby winner since Thunder Gulch in 1995. No horse has won both the Blue Grass and Derby since Strike the Gold in 1991.
“I’ve never won the Blue Grass and it’s always been a race that I’ve wanted to win,” said Nafzger, who has 19 career stakes victories at Keeneland. “The second reason is that I can ship right over from Churchill [Downs] and ship back that night. The third reason is that we’ve now got the Polytrack here. You don’t have to worry about the weather.”
Rain fell during another crisp morning at Keeneland on Wednesday when post positions were drawn for the 1 1/8-mile Blue Grass. Forecasts predict a 70% chance of rain on Saturday afternoon.
Street Sense and Great Hunter are the only graded stakes winners in the field of seven for the Blue Grass. Love Dubai and Time Squared were surprise entrants on Wednesday, particularly since both horses raced last week.
Love Dubai finished ninth in the Illinois Derby (G2) on April 7 at Hawthorne Race Course.
Time Squared, the sale-topper at $1.05-million in the 2006 Keeneland April two-year-olds in training sale, won a 1 1/16-mile maiden race in his fourth career start on April 6 at Keeneland.
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