AMSTERDAM (G2) QUOTES

Monday, August 2, 2010

 

AMSTERDAM (G2) QUOTES

 

Todd Pletcher, winning trainer of Discreetly Mine (No. 5): “The way he was rolling, I thought he was going to threaten Quality Road’s track record there for a second. It looks like [he’s a sprinter]. To watch him train all winter, I really felt like we were on the Derby trail in a legitimate way. The way he trained and galloped out I thought he might be able to do it, but now that we’ve backed up in distance he’s obviously found his niche. It worked out perfectly, he broke really well and stalked the main speed and looked like he was there when needed. The King’s Bishop [Grade 1, August 28] is an obvious possible next start; we’ll see how he comes out of it. We’d certainly be thinking about the Breeders’ Cup Sprint at this point, but that’s a ways away, so we’ll see how he bounces out of this and go from there.”

 

John Velazquez, winning jockey aboard Discreetly Mine (No. 5): “He looked really good today. He broke well at the start. I held him a little bit to give him a break the first part of the race. We snuck up to the lead. It was perfect. I knew the pace was going pretty fast. Once he broke from the gate, I knew he wanted to go. The speed [Essence Hit Man] took over and that was perfect for me to grab hold of my horse. He settled well. After that, it was pretty easy. As soon as I asked him to go, he opened up.”

 

Chantal Sutherland, jockey aboard runner-up Essence Hit Man (No. 4): “My horse was pretty excited today with everything that was going on. He broke pretty strong and usually he’ll settle a little more but he was pretty excited. I didn’t want to take him off his game and he’s just naturally got speed. That’s easy for him and I liked how he felt on dirt. I could just tell in him he was pretty nervous and excited at the same time – I thought he ran a dynamite race.”

 

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