Zo Impressive Resting Comfortably
Grade 1 winner Zo Impressive was resting comfortably in her stall Sunday morning, the day after suffering a condylar fracture in her right front leg running fourth behind Questing in the Grade 1, $600,000 Alabama Stakes.
Trainer Tom Albertrani said the gray daughter of Hard Spun will be sent this week to the Rood & Riddle Equine Center in Lexington , Ky., for surgery to repair the damage, after which a decision will be made on her racing future.
“She’s actually getting around the stall pretty good,” Albertrani said. “She’s just in a pressure bandage right now. It’s amazing. She had a good night. She’s standing square in her stall and she’s got her head out. She doesn’t seem stressed out at all about it.
“We’ll ship her to Kentucky in the next couple of days. She’s got a condylar fracture, but fortunately it didn’t go spiraling up the leg. It kind of just displaced right off the bottom. We’ll see how surgery goes and go from there.”
Zo Impressive has been first or second in six of her seven lifetime starts, winning the Grade 1 Mother Goose at Belmont Park on June 23. She was runner-up to Alabama winner Questing in the Grade 1 TVG Coaching Club American Oaks at Saratoga on July 21.
“She’s got a good nature about her,” Albertrani said. “If you look at her, she acts like there’s nothing wrong with her. She ought to be a good patient. It should hopefully be a simple procedure and she comes out of it OK. We’ll see what the next steps are.”
Meanwhile, Albertrani was pleased with the effort of Brilliant Speed, who ran third, beaten 6 ½ lengths, by Point of Entry in Saturday’s Grade 1 Sword Dancer Invitational.
“He came out of the race good,” Albertrani said. “It looked like [jockey Javier Castellano] had a lot more horse. I was hoping he would kind of give him just a little bit more rein. I thought he might have wanted to be a bit closer, but he ran well. We had no excuse.”
Since moving back to the turf, Brilliant Speed has placed in three Grade 1 stakes. He ran fifth, beaten just two lengths, in the Grade 1 Woodford Reserve Manhattan and most recently finished sixth behind Turbo Compressor in the Grade 1 United Nations.
“He kind of made up for the United Nations,” Albertrani said. “That was really his only bad one during the year. He’s always two lengths here, three lengths there. In all of his starts, he’s been right there. We’ll try them again somewhere. One of these days, he’s going to break through.”