Notonthesamepage to aim for shorter races

Spectacular Bid S. winner NOTONTHESAMEPAGE (Catienus) suffered pulmonary

bleeding during his seventh-place finish in Saturday's Fountain of Youth S. (G2)

and will be sent to a hyperbaric chamber and pointed to shorter races in the

future.

"He bled pretty bad," trainer Wesley Ward said Sunday morning. "It's

something we've been fighting with him and it came out again yesterday. It's

unfortunate, but I think we've got the makings of a pretty good miler. That's

where we will look from here."

Notonthesamepage was an impressive front-running winner of the Spectacular

Bid on January 3. With a fast pace expected in the Fountain of Youth, owner Ken

Ramsey, Ward and jockey Elvis Trujillo decided to experiment with taking back

off the pace. Ramsey now regrets that call.

"I told them let's see if he can take back, but it now looks like that put

stress on him," Ramsey said. "We've studied why horses bleed like this and it's

always the stress. We thought maybe we could take him back and send him a signal

when it was time to go, but instead it just stressed him out. It was bad

timing."

Ramsey and Ward have brought Notonthesamepage back from a similar situation

successfully in the recent past.

"We started him out at Keeneland last year and that's when we first saw he

had a bleeding problem," Ramsey said. "We got him back, cleaned him up and he

set a track record at Churchill next time out. We'll try that again and see

about a race like the (August 29) King's Bishop (S. [G1] at Saratoga) and the

Met Mile ([G1] at Belmont Park) next year."

Meanwhile, BREAK WATER EDISON (Lemon Drop Kid) was scheduled for X-rays, a

head-to-toe once-over and likely a nuclear scan as trainer John Kimmel seeks to

explain why the three-year-old had to be pulled up in the stretch of the

Fountain of Youth.

The winner of the Nashua S. (G3) at Aqueduct on November 2 has now finished

last in his two stakes attempts at Gulfstream Park, and the way he ran Saturday

under jockey Eibar Coa has Kimmel, a licensed veterinarian, concerned about what

the tests will find.

"Eibar said he seemed to put himself in a great position until they got into

the turn," Kimmel said. "He switched his lead and immediately took himself off

the bridle and kept switching back so that Eibar thought he hurt himself. He

tried to protect the horse and the horse seemed pretty willing to pull himself

up.

"We don't know yet, but if these X-rays don't show anything, I have a feeling

the nuclear scan will. A lot of times the X-rays will come back clean, but the

scintigraphy will light up bruises on the cannon bone. I hope that's not the

case, because that's 60-90 days right there, and that would pretty much wipe out

his season."

Scintigraphy is a diagnostic test in which a two-dimensional picture of a

body-radiation source is obtained through the use of radioisotopes.

The dust wasn't completely settled from the Fountain of Youth when trainer

Todd Pletcher threw another three-year-old on to the stage in a big way as the

AFFIRMATIF (Unbridled's Song) rolled to a nine-length victory in his career

debut, covering the the one-mile maiden turf contest in 1:34.27 -- faster by .04

than the time run by five-year-old Pletcher-trained stablemate Twilight Meteor

(Smart Strike) two races earlier in the Canadian Turf S. (G3).

"That was very impressive," Pletcher said immediately after the race. "He had

been training really well and we were optimistic, but you can never really know

with a first-timer going long. He was bred to run long and he was training like

he was going to run long. I wouldn't have any problem running back in a stakes

after that."

The win was also the first at Gulfstream for jockey Chris DeCarlo since his

return from shoulder surgery.

"That felt great," DeCarlo said. "He was looking around at everything and not

knowing what he was going to do in the post parade. He was a little green early

in the race, but then he settled in and ran like an old pro. It felt great to be

back. It felt great to win."