Belmont 2018 news: Hofburg 'well within himself' training
Juddmonte Farm's 2018 Belmont Stakes contender Hofburg has continued to train well at Bill Mott's Saratoga base, said the Hall of Fame trainer. Hofburg, second in the Grade 1 Florida Derby in his stakes debut and seventh in the Kentucky Derby last time out, galloped 1 5/8 miles over the Oklahoma training track Thursday morning.
"He looked really good. He was relaxed, which is a good thing, well within himself," said Mott. "So far, we feel pretty good about him."
With rain forecasted in the Saratoga Springs area Thursday evening into Friday morning, Mott is weighing his options when to breeze the chestnut Tapit colt this weekend. Hofburg worked last Friday, going six furlongs in 1:13.43 in company.
"He's going into this race nicely," Mott said. "Of course, we need to breeze again and make the move down to Belmont. We hope the ship goes good and he adapts well down there. But it seems like when we move him , he falls into the routine pretty well. He's pretty good about everything."
"Very uneventful," Romans said. "He did what he was supposed to do, and he did it the way he's supposed to do it. That's all I'm asking for."
He called preparing a horse for the Belmont Stakes "a balancing act."
"Very few people know how to prepare a horse for a mile and a half," he said. "You only do it once a year. I've kind of learned to back off a bit more, like [D. Wayne Lukas] is talking about, not pushing them over the hump."
While genetics come into play at the longest distances most of these horses will ever race, Romans said of training regimen, "you have to help them a little bit, but you just don't want to get into that spot of overdoing it."
Also at Churchill, Winchell Thoroughbreds' Tenfold, who finished third by a total of three-quarters of a length in the Preakness in his fourth career start, had a typical 1 1/2-mile gallop under exercise rider Angel Garcia.
"He'll go two miles tomorrow and breeze on Saturday," said Scott Blasi, who oversees the Churchill Downs operation for Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen, the 2016 Belmont Stakes winner with Creator. "The horse is doing great. His weight's good; he's putting on weight. We hopefully will get a good race in him.
"He has a lot of personality to him right now, a lot of life. I like what I see so far."
"He had a very good jog day," Barnes said. "He stayed with the pony the whole way. Very strong, very happy. Couldn't be happier."
Restoring Hope, third in Aqueduct's Grade 2 Wood Memorial before finishing 12th in the Grade 3 Pat Day Mile on the Derby undercard, had an identical training session in jogging a mile. "Very good," Barnes said.
Trainer Bob Baffert is expected back from California this weekend, with Justify likely to have his final workout on Monday before flying to New York on Wednesday, June 6.