Napoleon Solo, the dominant 6 1/2-length winner of last Saturday’s Grade 1 Champagne Stakes at Aqueduct, will bypass the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile on Oct. 31 at Del Mar, be put away for the season, and point to a 3-year-old campaign, trainer Chad Summers said Wednesday.
“He ran really fast and really hard and we feel it’s the fair thing to do,” said Summers, who trains Napoleon Solo for Al Gold. “It wasn’t an easy decision but at the same they went six furlongs in 1:07.88, just missed Kelly Kip’s [six-furlong] track record, and ran the fourth fastest Champagne.
“Me and Al, we’re students of the game and he’d be a bounce candidate,” Summer added. “I think he showed he has a chance to be a special horse and we want to give him that opportunity.”
Summers said Napoleon Solo will be sent to the farm for 30 to 45 days before spending the winter at Palm Meadows, a training center in South Florida.
The connections of Intrepido, winner of the Grade 1 American Pharoah Stakes at Santa Anita last Saturday, will have to pay a $100,000 supplemental fee to make their horse eligible to run in the Juvenile.
Trainer Jeff Mullins said while he expects owners Ruben Islas and Michele Arthur to pay that fee, he cautioned them about being in a hurry to write the check.
“I told them don’t jump the gun and pay this money right now,” Mullins said this week. “Wait until [pre-entry] day, make sure we’re 100 percent before we enter, then you pay their fee. If not, you don’t have to.”
Intrepido, a son of Maximus Mischief, made it 2 for2 around two turns with his three-quarter-length victory over the Bob Baffert pair of Desert Gate and Plutarch – separated by a nose for second – in the American Pharoah. Intrepido, ridden by Hector Berrios, got squeezed a little bit around the first turn, was in tight entering and again coming out of the second turn, and found his best stride very late to get the victory.
“If the horse gets a clean trip what happens?” Mullins said. “My fear was the way he [won] his maiden race, I didn’t want him in a dogfight on the lead. I asked Hector, is he kind enough you can rate him? He said, ‘I don’t think it’s going to be a problem, but we’ll be close.’ And he was close enough to find himself in a jam a few times, but he overcame it. We were very impressed with him.”
Ted Noffey’s 2 3/4-length victory in the Breeders’ Futurity made him 3 for 3 this year and likely stamped him as the favorite for the Juvenile. Ted Noffey, a son of Into Mischief trained by Todd Pletcher, has a similar profile to Pletcher’s 2022 Juvenile winner, Forte, who also won the Hopeful and Breeders’ Futurity before taking the Juvenile.
Trainer Bob Baffert said he is still considering as many as four horses for the Juvenile, including Desert Gate; Plutarch; Brant, the Del Mar Futurity winner; and Litmus Test, third in the Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland.
Doug O’Neill said Civil Liberty, a maiden who finished third in the Del Mar Futurity and fourth in the American Pharoah, is still under Juvenile consideration.
Trainer Kenny McPeek was non-committal on sending either Breeders’ Futurity runner-up Blackout Time or Champagne third-place finisher Universe to California for the Juvenile.
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