Nehro Scratched From New Orleans 'Cap

Owner Ahmed Zayat on the scratch of Nehro: “He came back tied up (from his exercise Saturday morning). He’s fine right now. We’re very cautious with him, obviously, because he’s a very nice colt. We want to error on the right side so we decided the right thing to do is to make sure he’s a hundred percent, so he’s going to be scratched.

“We believe he’s actually much better than last year when he was a very nice, late-developing colt. But he’s actually doing much, much better, working much, much better. He’s much more focused. We were very happy with where he was at and believed he would have run very, very big. Because he wasn’t going to be a hundred percent by the race, Steve (Asmussen) and I decided that he needed every chance to show what he’s made of so we decided to scratch him.

“The next logical step would be the Oaklawn Handicap (Gr. II, $350,000, 4-year-olds and up at 1 1/18 miles), which is April 14. We will ship him, hopefully, tomorrow, whenever he gets well, and breeze him there on Wednesday and go from there.”