Shared Sense to skip Kentucky Derby, campaign through fall

Indiana Derby winner Shared Sense, who finished fifth in Sunday's Ellis Park Derby, will not run in the Kentucky Derby, trainer Brad Cox said Tuesday.

"I just spoke with Jimmy Bell from Godolphin, and we have elected to bypass the Kentucky Derby and take it off of our radar," Cox said. "He will remain in training, and we will campaign him through the fall, but we will not point for the Kentucky Derby."

In six starts this year, the Street Sense colt had only one other victory, an allowance optional claiming race at Oaklawn in February.

His Indiana Derby score earned him 20 points toward qualifying for the Kentucky Derby, putting him at No. 24 on the leaderboard.

Cox said the Godolphin homebred "exited the Ellis Park Derby in excellent shape. I’m very happy with the way he looked yesterday and today. And the race — he just wasn’t involved early. He came running late, but it just didn’t really set up for him and he didn’t have the greatest trip. But he came out of it in good shape, and that’s the main thing."

As for why he and Bell decided against pursuing the Kentucky Derby, Cox said: "We just don't feel like he's accomplished enough to compete with those top three or four horses. And we feel like it would be in the best interest of the horse moving forward."

Cox said the plan for now is to give Shared Sense "plenty of time to recover from this race," noting that only about four weeks separated the Indiana Derby and the Ellis Park Derby.

For his next race, "we'll look and see what's out there," Cox said. "We'd like to keep him with the 3-year-olds. I think right now, just one race that we're kind of eyeballing would be the Oklahoma Derby, that's a possibility. We'll look through the stakes schedule, dig into it a little deeper over the next week or two."

The Oklahoma Derby is scheduled for Sept. 27 at Remington Park.