Albertrani Looking for Touchdown in Holy Bull

Godolphin will send out two homebreds for Saturday’s GII Holy Bull S. in the highly touted GII Remsen S. runner-up Frosted (Tapit) and First Down (Street Sense). The later, the most lightly-raced horse in the field with just two starts under his girth, has much to prove, but his trainer Tom Albertrani is optimistically confident in the colt’s ability. “He’s been training very well since we came down to Palm Meadows this winter,” the conditioner said. 

First Down graduated 3/4 of a length ahead of Frosted on debut going 6 1/ 2 panels Sept. 20 and finished fourth in the muddy GII Nashua S. at Aqueduct Nov. 2. 

“I was expecting even a better performance after his first race, but I think the muddy track had some effect on him that day,” Albertrani explained. “He probably got more of an education that day than in his first start, so hopefully, I can just attribute that to a bad track and he’ll come back around as he showed us in his first start.” 

Albertrani is encouraged by First Down’s development and believes the added distance will not pose a problem. 
“He’s been training really well and really aggressively lately,” the trainer offered. “Although he’s only had two races in him, we still want to see where this colt is at by running him here. We see a lot of positive signals and, hopefully, he’s a horse that has a lot of potential. I don’t see why he shouldn’t handle a mile and a sixteenth. Hopefully, he’ll be able to go even further, but this race this weekend should let us see where he is at.”