Stubborn before Ky. Derby prep, Sierra Leone wins Blue Grass

Lexington, Ky.

On his way to race in front of 150,000 people in four weeks at Churchill Downs, Sierra Leone made like a petulant 3-year-old in front of a Keeneland crowd that was about seven times smaller.

It took him longer to allow himself to be loaded into the gate than it took him to win the Grade 1, $1 million Blue Grass Stakes.

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“He had a little problem at the gate,” his trainer Chad Brown said. “He got over it.”

The fast track Saturday really was no different from the river he forded last month at Fair Grounds when he won the Risen Star (G2). Sierra Leone (8-5) took his cue from jockey Tyler Gaffalione again. He rode wide into the stretch again. And he picked off rivals again as if they were standing still. At the end of the 1 1/8 miles, he was a 1 1/2-length winner.

“At about the five-eighths pole, he was moving like a winner from then on,” Gaffalione said. “I saved some ground into the second turn. I popped him out, and he just does things so easy. He got there very easy. You could see when he made the lead, he was leaning in, waiting around and playing. Just an incredible horse.”

The $2.3 million Gun Runner colt owned by Peter Brant and the Coolmore lads of Ireland spotted the field 8 3/4 lengths after a half-mile and had only one of the other nine horses beaten. He made up eight places and 10 1/4 lengths to assure himself of one of the 20 posts May 4 in the Kentucky Derby.

His winning time was 1:50.08 on a sunny, 56-degree day. The amount of time his stubborn, pre-race display took was 2:46.

“He kind of did the same thing last time at Fair Grounds,” Gaffalione said, “but today being the last horse (in the gate), obviously the focus is on him. But I just try and stay calm and give him the confidence to go forward.”

Pre-empting concerns the same thing might happen when the crowd is super-sized 75 miles up the road in Louisville, Brown suggested the cozy confines of Keeneland were more of a factor.

“Right here they’re positioned right next to the crowd, so I think that had more to do with it,” said Brown, who has won the Blue Grass three times. “We’ll do plenty of gate schooling at Churchill. They have a great crew like they have here at Keeneland. I don’t anticipate that being a problem.”

Where this was the fourth race for Sierra Leone, it was only the third for Just a Touch (3-1), who stalked the early pace and flashed to the lead in the stretch only to be caught inside the last furlong. Still, the Justify colt finished second, the same result he had last out in the Gotham (G3). The two runner-up finishes gave him enough points to be assured of a spot in the Derby.

“We set off a pretty demanding pace,” Just a Touch’s trainer Brad Cox said. “I thought he finished up well. Obviously he couldn’t hold off the winner, and I think he’s going to be a lot better horse for it.”

On a track that has been kind to speed the first two days of the spring meet, Sierra Leone’s stablemate Top Conor (12-1) raced out to fractions of 23.15, 46.48, 1:10.83 and 1:36.65. He would wear down to a sixth-place finish after Just a Touch tracked him around both turns.

“The pace was a little bit quicker than I thought it would be,” Just a Touch’s jockey Florent Géroux said. “Turning for home I thought I had it. I just got run down by Sierra Leone.”

Epic Ride (51-1) finished 3 3/4 lengths behind Just a Touch to take third. Fountain of Youth (G2) winner Dornoch (5-2), who already was assured of his place in the Derby, was another 1 1/4 lengths up the track in fourth. Twelfth-time starter Mugatu (181-1), the longest shot on the board, took fifth in the field of 10.

Recency bias being what it is, Sierra Leone joined Fierceness as 3-1 co-favorites when Circa Sports reopened its Derby futures Saturday night in Las Vegas.

Fierceness was the 5-2 favorite, and Sierra Leone was 7-1 in the pari-mutuel Kentucky Derby Future Wager. Pool 6 of that national market closed Saturday at 4 p.m. EDT before the preps even though the Kentucky Derby website said it would run until 6 p.m. EDT.

“We just ran against a real good horse, probably the Derby favorite,” Géroux said. But he remembered Fierceness, who won by 13 1/2 lengths last week in the Florida Derby (G1).

Then he took a more overarching view that included the Risen Star, where Sierra Leone defeated such rivals as Catching Freedom and Resilience, both of whom won some of the biggest Derby qualifiers in the past week.

“When I see Resilience winning the Wood (G2), I’m like, oh, that looked like a key race. When Catching Freedom came back and won the Louisiana Derby (G2), those horses who finished first, third and fourth came back and won big races. Major preps.”

For connections of Sierra Leone and Just a Touch, there was no shortage of optimism about their upcoming runs for the roses. Especially from the Sierra Leone camp.

“He’s seen some different things now,” Brown said. “He’s finished a race with a bunch of mud all over him twice now. He’s been on a sloppy track. He’s a little subject to the pace of it, but the way the Derby looks, there’s plenty of fast horses in there. Now we’ll just have to get him in there healthy. That really is the key.”