Rydilluc Returns in Canadian Turf

Rydilluc will seek a return to his winning ways in Saturday’s $150,000 Canadian Turf (G3) at Gulfstream Park.The son of Medaglia d’Or stamped himself as one of the most exiting turf prospects in the country last season at Gulfstream Park, where he cavorted over the grass course for run-away victories in an allowance race and the Palm Beach Stakes (G3).

The then-3-year-old colt was so exciting, his owners and trainer Gary Contessa tested the Road to the Kentucky Derby in the Blue Grass Stakes (G1), in which Rydilluc set the pace before fading to a respectable fourth over Keeneland’s synthetic surface. Back on turf for his next start, the son of Medaglia d’Oro captured the inaugural running of the $460,000 Penn Mile at Penn National last June.

Favored in the Virginia Derby (G2), Rydilluc showed his usual early speed but faded to eighth over a ‘good’ Colonial Downs turf. An 11th-place finish in the Secretariat (G1) at Arlington Park last August convinced Contessa that something had to be wrong, but nothing showed up during veterinarian examinations..

“This would be the easiest game in the world if horses could talk to us. We’d know when to bet; we’d all be retired; we’d all have houses in the Bahamas,” Contessa said. “To the eye everything looked good. He trained good; he ate good. We ran him and he ran two very dull races in a row. The first one was in the Virginia Derby. It had rained all day so we assumed it was the soft turf. He came off that race and trained good. We said, ‘Let’s try him again and go to the Secretariat.' He ran poorly again.” Knowing something wasn’t right, Contessa and his owners sent Rydilluc for a nuclear scan.

“They take a nuclear isotope and put it in a horse’s vein and take a full body scan and whatever is bothering the horse lights up. His front ankles lit up. To the eye the ankles looked fine. You watch the ankles; you work with them, and the horse doesn’t show any pain. But his ankles lit up. They were obviously bothering him. There were no clinical signs of it,” Contessa said. “We just stopped with him and turned him out in upstate New York and let him be a horse. We blistered his ankles a little bit and then returned him to training at Palm Meadows.”

Rydilluc turned in an eye-catching seven-furlong workout in 1:22.05 on turf at Palm Meadows on Feb. 12 under jockey Edgar Prado.

“He’s trained lights-out. I didn’t want to him to work like that, but if you saw Edgar, he was like this,” said Contessa, holding his hands together to fashion a tight-hold of the reins. "He’s had a few days to recover. He hasn’t run for 6 months. I don’t think it’ll take anything out of him. At least, we know he’s ready to rock and roll.”