Eclipse champion Drefong (Gio Ponti), whose return to racing was upended when he took a left shortly after the start of Saturday's GI Bing Crosby S. and lost jockey Mike Smith, came out of the incident apparently unscathed and could make his next start in the Aug. 26 GI Forego S. at Saratoga.
“There's a million reasons to get beat and that was one of them,” trainer Bob Baffert said Sunday morning. “He could just as easily have hit the rail and broken his shoulder. But everybody came out of it fine, and that's all you can hope for.”
Drefong continued the race without Smith, running among the frontrunners and forcing eventual runner-up Roy H. (More Than Ready) six paths wide turning into the stretch and creating an inside route that Ransom the Moon (Malibu Moon) and Flavien Prat took to victory.
“I would have liked to have seen Drefong relax and rate himself behind horses,” Baffert said. “But he's pretty light on his feet and he recovered and bulled his way through on the rail. He's a competitor and he was still trying to win.”
While Ransom the Moon came out of the race “in good order,” according to trainer Phil D'Amato, trainer Peter Miller said runner-up Roy H. “got clipped.”
“I felt like we were much the best, we just got unlucky,” Miller said. “With a smooth trip, he wins by two lengths. But that's racing.”
Baffert, who watched his superstar Arrogate (Unbridled's Song) come home a disappointing fourth in the GII San Diego H. last weekend at Del Mar, remained stoic about the two stakes disappointments at the seaside oval.
“I don't have any control of those things,” Baffert said. “As long as everybody is OK you just shake it off, laugh it off and go on to the next one.”
Not a subscriber? Click here to sign up for the daily PDF or alerts.
