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Dublin gets in pre-dawn drill Four-time Kentucky Derby (G1)-winning trainer and former basketball coach D. Wayne Lukas called an audible before dawn Sunday and sent Hopeful S. (G1) hero DUBLIN (Afleet Alex) out for a five-furlong breeze in 1:02 4/5. Louisville, Kentucky, has been belted by heavy rain in recent days, and Lukas was looking for the best track surface he could find to give Dublin his final timed work before the Derby. The strip was labeled muddy at that early hour, when Churchill Downs' new permanent lighting system illuminated the track. With Derby jockey Terry Thompson aboard, Dublin worked in company with stablemate Luv Guv (Ten Most Wanted), and the strapping chestnut rolled past his target. Dublin turned in splits of :12 2/5, :24 1/5, :37 2/5 and :50 2/5 and galloped out six furlongs in 1:17 4/5. "It was a good maintenance work," Thompson said. "The track was sealed and pretty hard. He easily could have gone :59, but we didn't want to do that." During his bullet :59 1/5 drill on Monday, Dublin caught and passed workmate Buzzin and Dreamin (Five Star Day) a bit too quickly. On Sunday, he caught his new workmate with a quarter of a mile to run and finished eight lengths ahead. "That's what we wanted to do the last time, but we got him at the quarter-pole this time; that was the plan," Thompson said. "That probably explains why his fractions were a little slow early on." Lukas did not wait until the Derby and Kentucky Oaks (G1) horses take to the track at 8:30 a.m. (EDT), right after the renovation break, to breeze the colt. With rain in the forecast for later in the morning, he opted for the early work. "I agonized a little bit about it last night, thinking was it better to go right away if we had rain overnight, which we did, or was it better to take a chance on the breeze and sunshine cleaning it up," Lukas said. "It did not clean up as well as I thought it would. I was out there (later) for my Oaks filly (Tidal Pool [Yankee Gentleman]). "I think I made the right decision. I was the first one on the track when it opened, and I had walked it at 4:30 and it was even and smooth. That's all that counts. It wasn't exactly perfect, but the track was smooth; that's all you count. "It's a little bit dead, but we weren't asking for much anyhow. Like anybody working at about this time -- and I think all of my colleagues would agree -- you don't want a lot. He came home in :24 flat, though, so that's OK." Dublin bolted during a gallop Saturday morning when saw runners competing in the Louisville Marathon moving through the infield. He was a little goofy Sunday, moving to his right again, but quickly settled down for Thompson. "He was looking for the runners from yesterday. He remembered that," Thompson said. "Once he saw that there was nobody there everything was fine."
"Of course, it's everybody's great desire to be in the Derby, but...I don't think we know. We're so close. We're only a couple horses away. We'll be ready." Sanford S. (G2) star BACKTALK (Smarty Jones), who had vanned from his home base at Churchill Downs to Keeneland Race Course, worked over the synthetic Polytrack surface at the Lexington, Kentucky, track at about 7:15 a.m., and everything went just as trainer Tom Amoss and the Gold Mark Farm team had planned. The son of 2004 Kentucky Derby winner Smarty Jones worked five furlongs in company with the older allowance horse Sangre Frio (More Than Ready) on his inside, finishing a length in front of the stablemate in 1:01 3/5. Miguel Mena, who has the mount in the Derby should Backtalk draw into the field, was aboard for the work and Victor Lebron rode the workmate. Keeneland clockers caught Backtalk in splits of :12 1/5, :25, :37 4/5 and :50 2/5 with a six-furlong gallop-out time of 1:14 2/5. The final time was the fifth-fastest of 12 at the distance, and two-fifths of a second faster than Sangre Frio's 1:02. "It was exactly what we wanted," said Todd Quast, Gold Mark Farm's general manager of racing. "It was a nice, even work. He finished strong, full of run. It was a beautiful work. I'm glad we were over there on that surface today. "He started about two lengths behind Sangre Frio and tracked him beautifully. We asked (Mena) to wait for him until about the three-sixteenths pole, which he did. He went up right beside the other horse and then finished up strong. "We've had some works leading up to this where he worked a little fast, or a little slow, but this one was perfect. When he came back he wasn't blowing hard and his heart rate recovery was about 10 minutes, which is outstanding." The quality and execution of the work came as a relief to Backtalk's connections, who believe a faster-than-planned breeze prior to the Illinois Derby (G3) (six furlongs in 1:09 3/5) compromised his chances in that race at Hawthorne Park. "His work prior to the Illinois Derby was almost like a race, from a conditioning standpoint," Quast said. "I said before the race that if he comes back from that work and wins then we have a superhorse. We found out at the quarter-pole (when Backtalk faded from contention and wound up third). He was tired, and the other horses had already opened up, and he wasn't going to catch them. "You've got to draw a line through that one in comparison to everything else because of the circumstances. But having said that, that surely dumped his tank totally and now we've been able to fill it back up for Saturday. Since then he's been fantastic and he's been filling up. He's maturing, filled out, doesn't have a pimple on him." Amoss was similarly pleased. "I thought it went very well," the trainer said. "We designed it to go a certain way, and this time it did go exactly that way, so we're happy with it."
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