By Joe Quillen
Saturday 4/6/23 – Wood Memorial
Happy Saturday everybody! We head into the final major weekend of prep races today though she still have the last chance race next weekend in Keeneland, but we have the final 200 point races (100 points to the winner) today and we will see who will fill out the top 20 for the Kentucky Derby standings with the Lexington set for next Saturday
We have three races, the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, the Blue Grass at Keeneland, and the Santa Anita Derby at Santa Anita. If you watched my Twitch stream from Thursday night or caught the audio version on my podcast The Philly Guy Speaks, if you are going to play the Big 3 Pick 3 that is on these three races, you will have to wait almost four hours from first race to last.
Let’s begin with the Wood Memorial which is the tenth race on the Aqueduct card. Post time for this race is for approximately 4:07 pm Eastern, and if you want to watch this race live on television, you can watch this live on FanDuel TV, or you can go to FS2.
Thirteen horses are entered for this New York Road to the Derby finale, and there is a bit of a Philly flavor. Three Parx horses are entered. The three are the 3 Lonesome Boy (30/1 morning line) who won the City of Brotherly Love Stakes at Parx last month, the 12 Deposition (50/1 ML) who has run at Aqueduct the last two races, his trainer Uriah St. Lewis is based at Parx, and the 13 Uncle Heavy(9/1 ML) who won the Withers back in February.
Favored in the Wood is Deterministic (7/5 ML) who wasn’t that far off the pace but took advantage of a sloppy track to win easily. He’s second race off of the layoff and already has the points to run next month in the Derby. He’s been training well down in Florida and comes up for the race.
Things could set up for the favorite. The 2 El Grande O (8/1 ML), who has run near the front each of his three starts on the Derby trail; the 6 Evening News (20/1 ML) who has been winning on the front end on the synthetic course at Turfway; and the 7 Merit (20/1 ML), who held second at Gulfstream last month. If they hook up, things will set up nicely for the favorite and for a few others.
The aforementioned Uncle Heavy already has won at this distance of a mile and an eighth, which is something none of the other horses can claim. But what concerns me here is the fact that he was stuck in New York after the Withers because of an equine herpesvirus breakout at Belmont, which lead to Parx to not allow any horses to return from New York for a little bit. Also, that 13 post does not look inviting either, but he could get lag back some and try to get over instead of gunning for the lead like some of the others would.
What helps Uncle Heavy is the fact that his trainer Butch Reed’s analytical stats are off the charts. Horses that come back between two and six months of its previous race wins 36% of the time. The combination of Reid and jockey Mychel Sanchez have won 28% of the time in the last 15 months.
The 9 Tuscan Sky (4/1 ML) takes the next logical step here after winning going around two turns at the Fair Grounds in February, who drew off to win by two in an optional claimer.
The 1 Resilience (6/1 ML) could not get by Track Phantom in the Risen Star at Fair Grounds while Sierra Leone blew by everyone on the outside. Resilience could up there at the end as well.
I’m going to try to beat the favorite here and I’m going with the Parx horse Uncle Heavy once again. He has some time to get over and not be way wide on the first turn, and he’ll take advantage of the experience going nine furlongs to clinch his date at the Derby. I’ll call this 13-4-9-1 and my play is $20 to win on the 13.
Follow Joe on Twitter/Instagram/Threads @JoeQuills and check Joe’s sports stream podcast on Twitch every Tuesday and Thursday at 9 pm ET starting on Tuesday 4/9, and his YouTube channel where you can catch the show on demand.