Soul Driver Ready for Del Mar Derby

Soul Driver’s victory in the Oceanside Stakes on Opening Day got the Summer Meeting off to a rousing start for trainer Jeff Mullins.

 

On Sunday, the penultimate day of the meeting, the Kentucky-bred son of Street Boss could provide his connections – Mullins and the ownership group headed by Oceanside’s Jeff Bloom – with a fantastic finish to the meet with a victory in the $250,000 Grade II Del Mar Derby.

 

Soul Driver, who’ll be ridden for the second time by Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith, is the third choice at 7-2 on oddsmaker Russ Hudak’s morning line behind Prospect Park (8-5) and Om (5-2).

 

The Del Mar Derby closes the stakes series for 3-year-olds which began with the Oceanside and continued with the La Jolla Handicap on Saturday, August 9. Mullins opted to pass on the La Jolla, which was won impressively by Prospect Park, and wait for the Derby.

 

“I don’t see any reason to run a horse of this quality three times here,” Mullins said Saturday morning. “The meeting’s too short.”

 

The Oceanside was the second straight win for Soul Driver, following one in the $87,000 Singletary at Santa Anita on June 20. The Del Mar Derby will be the second graded stakes try for the colt, who has three wins in nine career starts and earnings of $150,840 in 2015 and $203,350 in his career.

 

Soul Driver charged from 10^th in a field of 11 at the halfway mark of the one-mile Oceanside to prevail by a nose. The Derby is an extra eighth of a mile.

 

“He’s already won at the distance,” Mullins pointed out – a maiden-breaking effort in his second career start last October at Santa Anita. Prospect Park is 0-for-2 at 1 1/8 miles, but both those races were on dirt and against the likes of Dortmund in the Santa Anita Derby and Gimme Da Lute, who nosed him out in the Los Alamitos Derby. Om has never raced longer than 1 1/16 miles.

 

Mullins capped a big first week of the meeting when he saddled Gabriel Charles to victory in the Grade I Eddie Read. In early August, however, Gabriel Charles suffered a severe bout of colic from which he is recovering after emergency surgery at an equine hospital in Bonsal.

 

Mullins has five wins from 25 starters for the meeting and an overall 44 percent in the money record with purse earnings of $457,892.

 

The field from the rail: Win the Space (Joe Talamo, 15-1), Prospect Park (Kent Desormeaux, 8-5), Soul Driver (Mike Smith, 7-2), Papacoolpapacool (Tiago Pereira, 8-1), Royal Albert Hall (Flavien Prat, 15-1), Om (Gary Stevens, 5-2) and Crittenden (Rafael Bejarano, 6-1).