Saturday, June 9, 2012
WOODY STEPHENS (G2) QUOTES
Shivananda Parbhoo, winning owner of Trinniberg (No. 6): “There’s nothing more that we can ask for. I was expecting 44 [seconds], 1:08. I know this horse is capable of going fast. When they run this hard, you hope they come back good. $400,000, this is the biggest win. I don’t think any 3-year-old is going to be able to run with him.”
Willie Martinez, winning jockey aboard Trinniberg (No. 6): “It doesn’t get any better. We’re still sad, what happened earlier with Giant Ryan. It’s a bittersweet win. I have mixed emotions, but not to [take away from] Trinniberg’s performance. It was unbelievable, as we expected him to do. He was pressed today, he handled it well, and we believe he’s one of the top sprinters in the country right now – definitely the best 3-year-old sprinter right now, and he lived up to expectations. It was an amazing ride. I’ve always been confident in this horse on any kind of surface.”
Terri Pompay, trainer of runner-up Currency Swap (No. 9): “I thought he ran great. I was hoping someone else would go with Trinniberg and we could settle a little bit and come up and get him, but nobody did. Like [jockey] Rajiv [Maragh] said, he had to go do the dirty work because no one else wanted to do it, and we just got a little tired at the end. He was trying to get to him, he just couldn’t this time. I was thinking we were going to get him, but you could see coming down the stretch my horse was a little tired. I could see it in his face. He was just like, ‘Help!’ But he tried; he really ran a good race. I was really happy with him.”
“I think right now we’re going to [keep him at shorter distances]. Down the road we might try stretching him out again, but right now I think we know he can do this. Let’s get him some confidence, and rack up some earnings, and we’ll go from there.”
“I think the [Foxwoods] King’s Bishop [G1, $500,000 at Saratoga Race Course, August 25]. I’ll have to talk to the owners, but if he comes out of this well, we had already kind of touched on that a little bit.”
Rajiv Maragh, rider of runner-up Currency Swap (No. 9): “My horse broke well and ran hard every step of the way, he just finished second. I was hoping [to catch him], seemed like I had a good shot to, but he just couldn’t get by.”
