TWO familiar names took the two top prizes on the Saturday card at Aqueduct.
The Grade 3 Peter Pan Stakes is often used as a prep for the Belmont Stakes for later maturing three-year-olds, won by the Grade 1 Belmont and Travers Stakes winner Arcangelo two years ago.
Victory went to the former Irish-trained Hill Road (Quality Road) who, in the colours of Amo Racing, ran down a Rick Dutrow Jr. pair McAfee and Captain Cook to win by three-quarters of a length and stamp his ticket for a date with the Belmont in June.
A debut winner for Adrian Murray last year, he was stepped up when his next start came in the Group 1 Vincent O’Brien National Stakes at the Curragh where he finished seventh to Scorthy Champ in a field which included Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf and French Guineas winner Henri Matisse.
His first start on the dirt track in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, he came with a late run to take third behind champion juvenile Citizen Bull.
He was moved to the barn of Chad Brown for a 2025 campaign and finished third in the Group 3 Tampa Bay Derby behind Owen Almighty who recently ran fifth in the Kentucky Derby
“I was concerned about the pace on paper, but a little bit of pace developed, and the horse ran great,” said Chad Brown said of the Lynch Bages & Camas Park Stud-bred colt. “He made a middle move and kind of moved up into a tight spot and paused and then came again.”
“I know he didn’t switch leads, so we have some work to do there. Flavien [Prat] had him running fairly straight the last part of the race, so that was good.”
On a start in the Belmont Stakes on June 7th, Brown said, “This horse really wants to go a mile and a quarter – we felt that after the Tampa race, Tyler Gaffalione rode him and was quite excited about the horse, checking in on him because he considered him one of his Derby mounts.”
In the Grade 2 Man O’ War Stakes over a mile and three furlongs, the now five-year-old Far Bridge, picked up another prestigious prize for Christophe Clement.
Ridden by Joel Rosario, he was a Grade 1 winner at three and four and the English Channel entire horse looks set to be to the fore of the turf horses in the US again this season.
Calvin Houghland Iroquois Stakes (Grade 1)
JUST a week after partnering Cool Jet to a Grade 1 success, jockey Bernie Dalton picked up another top-level prize when he rode Abaan to success in the Calvin Houghland Iroquois Stakes at Percy Warner Park in Nashville last Saturday.
The strong-finishing Abaan denied champion Snap Decision to win the $250,000 contest,
The Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Daigneault Thoroughbreds’ eight-year-old son of Will Take Charge, turned the tables on top US jumper Snap Decision - last year’s Eclipse Award-winning jumper - who had edged him at Middleburg three weeks ago.
Abaan, a former flat competitor who won the 2022 Grade 3 W. L. McKnight Stakes at Gulfstream for Todd Pletcher, is now trained by Kate Dalton and was ridden on Saturday by her 56-year-old husband.
Danny Mullins made the trip over and finished third in the big race on Vae Patron for Leslie Young. He had partnered a winner for the trainer in the opening hurdle race on board the Irish-bred For The Parish.