Kentucky Derby 2019 Radar: Galilean takes Chrome's road
The waters should deepen next time for Monday’s $200,000 California Cup Derby winner, Galilean, whose third career stakes victory from four Cal-bred starts will put him on the 2019 Kentucky Derby trail.
And it’s not as if we haven’t been here before. California Chrome blazed this path just five years ago.
“We pointed for this,” owner West Point Thoroughbreds’ Jeff Lifson said after Galilean crushed four rivals at Santa Anita Park by 4 1/2 lengths and in similar fashion to his nine-length King Glorious Stakes win back in December.
“Once he got done with the race at Los Al and ran so big, we looked specifically at this. I don’t think we were necessarily thinking we were going to duplicate what California Chrome did. We just wanted to give him one easy, we hope, 3-year-old start and see what happened.”
As with Galilean, California Chrome won the King Glorious, then run at the now-defunct Hollywood Park, along with the Cal Cup Derby, then run in January, before taking the San Felipe Stakes (G2), Santa Anita Derby (G1) and Kentucky Derby in succession.
Given the current racing calendar, Galilean would be hard-pressed to wheel back in two weeks for the San Felipe, Lifson said. But he looks like a candidate for a major prep somewhere, as trainer Jerry Hollendorfer has hinted the colt could try since the breakout win last time.
“We’ve got a Hall of Famer who’s calling the shots here, and he’s got a great staff, too,” Lifson said. “…I would think we’d look for one of those 50-point races in March and maybe come back here for the Santa Anita Derby or one of those early April races where they’ve got 100 points on the line.”
"We have a whole bunch of options," Hollendorfer added. "There are a lot of races everywhere for him and we’re nominated everywhere, so we’ll try to make a good decision as to where to run next."
Purchased for $600,000 as a 2-year-old, Galilean, by Uncle Mo, suffered his only career defeat by a neck to the well-regarded Bob Baffert runner Cruel Intention in the Nov. 3 Golden State Juvenile, also at Santa Anita. That day, the 1-2 finishers were a neck apart at the wire. It was another 16 lengths to third.
On Monday at Santa Anita Park, jockey Flavien Prat handled Galilean with confidence, stalking just off the pace while three-wide in the clear. Following three-quarters of a mile in 1:11.60, he surged clear of his rivals off the turn and finished up 1 1/16 miles in 1:43.43 in a hand ride.
Lifson said West Point, one of racing’s largest partnerships, said “we’ve got some real sort of newbies on this particular horse, which is such a cool thing. Like, easy game, right?”
So far.