Catholic Boy's 'major' work leads Breeders' Cup action at Churchill

Hall of Fame jockey Javier Castellano did not have much time to celebrate his 5,000th career win achieved Saturday at Belmont Park. He had to catch a plan for a 5:30 a.m. engagement at Churchill Downs, where he worked Breeders' Cup Classic contender Catholic Boy five furlongs in 1:02.60 on Sunday morning.

“It’s really amazing to think how much riders truly mean to a work,” trainer Jonathan Thomas said. “Javier is great and I’m glad we’ve got him.”

Castellano and Catholic Boy broke from Thomas’ stable pony at the six-furlong pole and started the five-furlong move through splits of :13.40, :26, :38.20 and :50.60 prior to galloping out six furlongs in 1:15.40 and seven furlongs in 1:28, according to Churchill Downs’ clocker John Nichols.

“I thought everything went really well,” Thomas said. “He broke off kindly from the pony. He started the work slowly but really picked it up from there. It was more of an endurance-building work this morning. He ran two tough races over the summer (in the July 7 Belmont Derby and Aug. 25 Travers) so we didn’t really need anything too speedy.

"This was probably the most major work prior to the Classic, and we’ll likely come back with something easy next weekend.”

Castellano, who is named to ride Catholic Boy in the Classic, nearly echoed Thomas after he returned to Barn 41.

“He broke off really nicely today,” Castellano said. “He feels really good and really galloped out well. He really picked it up well down the lane and galloping out.”

Catholic Boy, a 3-year-old son of More Than Ready, has won three-consecutive graded stakes races on both the turf and dirt: the June 2 Pennine Ridge (G3) at 1 1/8 miles on turf; Belmont Derby (G1) at 1 ¼ miles on turf and Travers at 1 ¼ miles on dirt.