Channel Cat's comeback attempt to begin in Fort Lauderdale

Calumet Farm’s homebred Grade 2 winner Channel Cat, closing in on $1 million in career earnings, will launch his comeback off a nine-month break between starts in Saturday’s $200,000 Fort Lauderdale (G2).

The 5-year-old son of turf champion English Channel came within a length of winning last year’s Fort Lauderdale, beaten a neck for second by Admission Office. After running a troubled 10th in the $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational (G1), Channel Cat was fourth by 1 ½ lengths in the Pan American (G2) Mar. 28, his most recent race.

Channel Cat will be making his first start for Calumet’s private trainer, Jack Sisterson, after winning five of 22 races and $948,592 in purse earnings for Todd Pletcher. Channel Cat will go up against a pair of Pletcher trainees, Grade 1 winner Halladay and multiple stakes winner Largent, in the Fort Lauderdale.

“No real major issues, just a little let down. With Calumet in Lexington and me being stabled at Keeneland, we’ve got paddocks to turn them out and things. It wasn’t anything else,” Sisterson said. “Todd did a great job with him and they just wanted to keep in that routine of turning him out in the paddocks and things like that. He’s done well since we shipped him down here and we look forward to seeing him run on Saturday.”

Corey Lanerie has the assignment from Post 5 of 10 in the Fort Lauderdale. A three-time stakes winner including the 2018 Bald Eagle Derby at Laurel Park and 2019 Bowling Green (G2) at Saratoga, Channel Cat has breezed twice over the turf at Palm Meadows, Gulfstream’s satellite training facility in Palm Beach County.

“I’ve had him for a couple of months now and he’s just a typical English Channel. He’s very workmanlike on the dirt, but when you put him on the grass he puts his best footsteps forward,” Sisterson said. “We don’t [typically] win off a layoff but we’ll expect him to improve a lot off the Fort Lauderdale and fingers crossed we can regain some of the form he had when Todd did so well with him. It might be hard to regain some of that, but he’s doing well at the moment.”

A return trip to the Pegasus Turf would be in store, Sisterson said, should Channel Cat run well. Instilled Regard, last year’s Fort Lauderdale winner, finished third in the 2020 Pegasus Turf.

“Absolutely, that’s the goal,” Sisterson said. “Sometimes they slow down with age so we’ll see if that’s the case with him. Training-wise he doesn’t show that he has, but you don’t know until you bring them over there in the afternoon. That’s the main thing.”