- Saratoga Race Course: Cogburn 3 for 3 on turf after Troy win, stopping Caravel’s winning streak
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Trainer Brad Cox now knows that Caravel doesn’t care for soft turf.
Trainer Steve Asmussen had started to believe that Cogburn preferred turf over dirt, in general.
That belief was reinforced on Saturday when Cogburn caught Nobals to win the Grade III Troy at 5 1/2 furlongs on the Mellon Turf Course at Saratoga Race Course.
On turf softened considerably by a thunderstorm that led to cancellation of the last four races on Friday’s card, Cogburn improved to 3 for 3 running on the grass since Asmussen shifted him from dirt sprints in late May.
Meanwhile, Caravel, the sensational mare who beat males in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint in November, had her five-race winning streak stopped.
The 4-year-old Cogburn opened his 2023 season with a narrow victory on the dirt, but after finishing off the board in two straight starts at Oaklawn Park, Asmussen tried Cogburn on the grass in the Chamberlain Bridge at Lone Star, and after winning that, Cogburn backed it up with another stakes win at Lone Star on June 24.
“It was the frustration of not thinking we were getting good races out of him on the dirt,” Asmussen said. “He has always trained brilliantly on the dirt and put down some really good numbers early. As an older horse, he wanted something different, and obviously he’s found it.”
Ridden by Ricardo Santana, Jr., Cogburn tracked pacesetter Nobals until the eighth pole, then began to accelerate toward him from there.
Despite a couple bobbling steps in the stretch, Cogburn took the lead 70 yards from the wire and won by three-quarters of a length, as Nobals held second by a length and a half over Thin White Duke.
“You love the position he was in during the race,” Asmussen said. “You could tell how confident Ricardo was. It looked like he was loaded, he got him out and looked like he was going to do enough.
“I was concerned that it looked like he missed the ground a couple of times coming to the wire on this soft turf. But galloping out, he looked beautiful.”
Caravel went off as the 1-2 betting favorite, but failed to gather any momentum in the stretch and finished fourth, her first loss in almost 11 months.
Trainer Brad Cox gave a quick assessment of how she handled the turf rated “soft.”
“That’s what it was,” he said. “She never traveled like that in her life. It’s the turf course 1,000%. Mark it off, we know what we’ve got, we’ll regroup and I don’t know where we’ll go from here.”
