A Day at Delaware Park

You've heard of Railbirds, but have you heard of Gatebirds?
Saw this guy before the feature and just had to get a picture of
him for my sister who adores birds.

Since I wasn't able to go to Baltimore for the second leg of the Triple Crown on Saturday, I decided to do the next best thing. I made my way to my local track which of course is Delaware Park.

The feature for the day was the Joseph French Memorial featuring last year's Oaklawn Handicap winner Win Willy. He also defeated Old Fashioned in the Rebel as a 3yo which gave the then undefeated colt his first loss. He would go onto race one more time, before being retired due to an injury. Willy ran awesome finishing a closing second to Not Abroad who I saw finish a good second back in 2010 in the Barbaro. This was his season debut. Malibu Glow who ran in last year's Travers finished third in the race.

Also running on Saturday where Morrow Code who finished 6th in the Instant Racing at Oaklawn. She won her race, maybe we see her on Belmont day in the Go For Wand? Sue's Sweet Sioux, half sister to last year's Obeah runner up Tiz Miz Sue also raced. She was third in her maiden to a Darley horse named Maria's Own.

Sue's Sweet Sioux before her race in
the paddock.

The race before the French, long time racing fans where in for a treat. The foals of two of the top fillies to ever run for Todd Pletcher and who are now mares at Darley ran against each other. Quarto who won the race is by AP Indy out of Octave who finished behind Dreaming of Anna in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies in 2006 and Rags to Riches in the Kentucky Oaks in 2007. She would of course to win the Mother Goose and finish 3rd in the Distaff that same year before being sold to Darley and retired.

The runner up in the race was Steele Road who is by Street Cry (IRE) out of the great filly Ashado. All she did for Pletcher was win the Oaks, Coaching Club Oaks and Distaff the same year leading to 3yo Filly honors. The next year while she did win 3 G1 races, she really wasn't the same horse that she was at 3. Still, she had done more then enough to earn Older Female honors and was sold for then a world record to Darley as well.

Also in the race was 4th place finisher Horn Buckle, a son of Ghostzapper (who ironically defeated Ashado for Hall of Fame honors this year) out of Welcome Surprise. During her racing career, she won the Dogwood, but it's her pedigree that's more interesting. She is out of Weekend Surprise which makes her a 1/2 sister to none other then Summer Squall and A.P. Indy. Horn Buckle, is a 1/2 brother to Mr. Sekiguchi who cost $8,000,000 as a yearling but only could win 2 races in his career.

Edgewater in the paddock before the French.  Finished 5th
in the race.

Sadly, I missed the first race of the day by about 10 minutes so I don't have any photos of that. Also I don't have any of the finale which was for Arabians. The reason being is I wanted to get home quick enough to watch the Preakness. I also didn't get any bets in, because all the machines that I knew about where in use when I was thinking about making the bet. The crowd for

Not all of my pictures that I took are posted on today's post. Why? Because I ended up taking over 200 photos. Also there is not enough storage space to put them all up here. However, throughout the week I will be adding the photos to Facebook on the Furlong Drive page (the album should be public for those who don't have Facebook). You can find a link right here. So for now enjoy some of my other photos that I took. When will I get back to the track? Maybe in a few weeks if I don't go to the Belmont, maybe that weekend. However, more then likely Delaware Oaks and Delaware Handicap will be my next two times heading to the track.

Steele Road in the post parade

Off in the French!