Plum Kingdom

Here are the recaps.

Oaks

A few weeks ago I said on Twitter that I felt that Plum Pretty was the horse who could defeat the Tapit fillies and still thought that way until I realized I was going to be rooting Daisy Devine. Of course that didn't work and Plum Pretty was able to give her sire Medaglia d' Oro his second Oaks winner. St. John's River ran an awesome race to finish to finish second and Zazu was third. No excuse for Joyful Victory who was on the rail which was the worst part to be in. Sadly it was too far for Daisy. Gives Trainer Bob Baffert his second Oaks win (Silverbulletday in 1999). Martin Garcia got his first Oaks win, one year after winning the Preakness on Lookin at Lucky.

Derby

Since the AR Derby I had my eyes on one horse: Archarcharch. Sadly he was pulled up after the race and will be having surgery (thankfully not life threatning, but then likely career ending). The racing gods must have smiled on former Bobby Frankel trainees as two of his best swept sire honors. Friday it was MDO, Saturday it was the King of the Animals! Leroidesmuex (or as I will be calling him the rest of the post, Leroi)'s Animal Kingdom won the Kentucky Derby. It gives not only Graham Motion his first Derby win, but John Velesquez who was supposed to be riding Uncle Mo his first. One year after his main trainer Todd Pletcher got his. Team Valor who had been so close with Captain Bodgit was able to get a bit of revenge on Bob. Also on Todd who was the main trainer for them until this year. Animal Kingdom becomes the 2nd Fair Hill based horse to wear the roses in 5 years (the late great Barbaro being the other). Nehro was second, Mucho Macho Man finished up in third with Shakleford in fourth.

So the flags of Arizona, Mexico, England and Puerto Rico fly high tonight. Those are the home state/countries/terratory of the winning connections trainer and jockey wise. And MDO and Leroi may have had an angel looking over them. Both where trained by Bobby Frankel during their careers. Even though on my final list I had AK listed as last, in reality he was around fifth. The reason why he was last was he had yet to work on dirt.

So we now move onto the Preakness, it makes you wonder if Leroi's son will get stopped by a son of the horse who denied him the BC Mile in his final start. I will be talking about him later this week.