Ward 'wouldn't be afraid of anybody' as Kimari swaps to dirt

Last week, as the dust settled from Keeneland’s decision to cancel its Spring Meet, trainer Wesley Ward began plotting out options elsewhere for his stakes horses to run.

That included a potential trip north with the 3-year-old filly Kimari, who he liked for the April 4 Bay Shore (G3), a seven-furlong sprint that would have both matched her against males and switched the daughter of Munnings to dirt.

Since then, a New York backstretch worker’s positive test for COVID-19 has halted racing at Aqueduct, too. It means Ward may still be looking.

Wherever he winds up with Kimari, who’s campaigned by David Mowat, the trainer will be confident after “she had a couple of eye-opening breezes” at Gulfstream Park West.

“She is really, really going to be something this year,” Ward said.

A winner of three starts in five races last season at 2, Kimari was a runner-up in a massive spot,  Royal Ascot’s Queen Mary Stakes (G2), in just her second start. She won Saratoga’s Bolton Landing Stakes and Keeneland’s Indian summer before finishing the campaign with a fourth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint won by Ward stablemate Four Wheel Drive.

Kimari got back started in January with a string of turf works at the Palm Meadows Training Center until the switch to dirt on March 6. She clocked 5/8 of a mile in a bullet 58 seconds, then on March 15 returned to drill through six furlongs in a snappy 1:12.20.

“I think she’ll be even better on the dirt than the grass,” Ward said. “We just had a some issues last year that kept her racing on the grass to keep her sound.”

After a come-from-behind victory in the Indian Summer, Ward noticed a wet track stiffened Kimari’s shoulders up. Believing grass is a kinder surface on which to run, connections remained on the lawn.

“Time off seems to have rectified everything,” he said. “I wouldn’t be afraid of anybody on the dirt right now based on her last two works.”

And it's not as if she's never done it. Ward, as he likes to do with early developing 2-year-olds, got Kimari started on the main track last April at Keeneland. She won by 15 lengths going just 4 1/2 furlongs to begin a promising career.