Gottcha Gold Ready For Salvator Mile at Monmouth Park

Posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008

Saturday’s $300,000 Salvator Mile (G3) at Monmouth Park has an added attraction this year as a Breeders’ Cup Challenge event, meaning the winner earns an automatic starting berth in the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile to be run on October 25 at Santa Anita Park.

For Centaur Farms, Inc.’s Gottcha Gold that’s just more incentive to try for a repeat in Monmouth’s top one-mile event of the summer. Last year, the 5-year-old son of Coronado’s Quest upset the odds-on Lawyer Ron in the Salvator and went on to run second to Corinthian in the inaugural running of the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile on a sloppy track last year at Monmouth Park.

Gottcha Gold, coming off a narrow neck to Student Council defeat in the Pimlico Special (G1) on May 16, Gottcha Gold has worked extremely well for his repeat try, finishing his prep with five-eighths in 1:01 3/5 last Saturday.

“I was very happy with the work,” race horse trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. said. “He’s as ready as he can be for this race.”

Gottcha Gold impressed clockers with the way he went through his final breeze, as he continued going after the recorded five-furlong drill, galloping out steady fractions for six furlongs, seven furlongs and one mile.

“He’s like a train,” Plesa said of the work. “Once he gets going, he keeps on going.”

With his regular rider jockey Chuck Lopez sidelined by injury, Gottcha Gold will have a new jockey Saturday in jockey Eddie Castro, who was aboard in the work. Castro, however, is “new” only in the sense that he hasn’t ridden the horse this year.

Jockey Eddie Castro was aboard when Gottcha Gold broke his maiden at Calder in 2005, and won an allowance race at Monmouth with Gottcha Gold in 2006. Castro last rode the race horse Gottcha Gold on October 6, 2006, when they were fourth in the Pegasus (G3) at the Meadowlands.

Gottcha Gold’s best races have come on the front end - he won both the Salvator and Iselin last year in wire-to-wire fashion — but Plesa said the horse does not need the lead to do his best.

“If somebody wants the lead bad enough, they can have it,” race horse trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. said. “He can sit off the pace and make his run like he did in Florida (a win in the Grade 3 Skip Away Handicap at Gulfstream Park in March). There was a rabbit in there, and he just stalked the fast pace and made the lead in the stretch.”

Horse racing barn notes from www.monmouthpark.com.

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"Gottcha Gold Ready For Salvator Mile at Monmouth Park" was posted on Wednesday, July 2nd, 2008 at 11:12 pm and is filed under Horse Racing Industry, Horses, Monmouth Park, Race Tracks News, Stakes Races, USA Horse Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a response, or trackback from your own site.