Ward 'looking for other avenues' with Keeneland's spring meet off
It’s a system that has served trainer Wesley Ward well over the years: Build up the barn with developed yearling purchases and recent 2-year-old acquisitions, then turn them loose at Keeneland on his way to Royal Ascot.
Only this season, there’s no Keeneland Spring Meet, a recent casualty of the COVID-19 epidemic. And there’s no guarantee Ascot will happen either with the British Horseracing Authority having already called off races through at least April.
“We’re looking for other avenues,” Ward said Tuesday, still continuing to assess where to get his young runners started. “All the tracks racing, when the 2-year-old races start, we’ll ship and be in them.
“Everything changes with the virus from day to day. Hopefully racing continues. The horses have to be cared for; they have to be exercised.”
Most American tracks have remained open for racing but behind closed doors. As with other horsemen looking to stay in business, Ward wants that practice to continue, allowing fans and bettors to tune in from off site.
The Ward barn’s horses are stabled in large part for now at Keeneland, where training will be permitted to continue. He also has a barn at Palm Meadows in Florida.
“I try to target Keeneland for all my horses,” Ward said. “That’s my main meet. With all this happening so quick and suddenly, we’re going to have to figure out where to go with all our horses.”
As far as stakes, he’s looking at a pair of Aqueduct targets and hoping Churchill Downs’ Spring Meet continues in some form after the Kentucky Derby was postponed to Sept. 5.
The 3-year-old filly Kimari could go against males in the April 4 Bay Shore (G3), a seven-furlong Aqueduct sprint that would also switch her to dirt. A daughter of Munnings, Kimari took the Keeneland-to-Ascot route last season, running a close second in the Queen Mary (G2). Back in America, she also won stakes at Saratoga and Keeneland.
The Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint winner Four Wheel Drive, who was penciled in for his 3-year-old debut at Keeneland, has Aqueduct’s April 11 Bridgetown at six furlongs on the lawn as an option.
Maven, as with Four Wheel Drive a son of American Pharoah, opened 2-for-2 last year with a stakes victory in France. He hasn’t run since failing to fire in a July 31 race in England but could get back to action in Churchill Downs’ William Walker Stakes, a five-furlong turf test originally scheduled for April 25 but likely to be pushed back, if run at all.