Pants on Fire zips in the slop; Toby, Comma work at their home bases

At Churchill Downs on Sunday, George and Lori Hall's PANTS ON FIRE (Jump

Start) breezed a half-mile in :47 4/5 with jockey Rosie Napravnik up. The

Louisiana Derby (G2) winner was first onto the sloppy track from the

five-eighths gap during the Derby-Oaks training session that began at 8:30 a.m.

(EDT).

Trailing just a few seconds behind Uncle Mo (Indian Charlie) and Stay Thirsty

(Bernardini), the colt worked

from the half-mile pole to the finish line through splits of  :11 4/5 and

:24 and galloped out five furlongs in 1:01 4/5.

"We had said :48 would be perfect, so we got what we wanted," trainer Kelly

Breen said. "He pulled up good, didn't turn a hair. Now it's all up to the

racing gods. He's fit and ready to go."

Napravnik, who was aboard Pants on Fire for the first time since the

Louisiana Derby, was similarly satisfied with the move.

Because of the way the calendar falls this year, the Louisiana Derby was held

six weeks out from the Kentucky Derby (G1) instead of what would normally be a

five-week gap. That spacing has not been a concern for Pants on Fire.

"He showed a lot of improvement going into there, and he showed a little bit

of a spark and still he's maintained it," Breen said. "Yesterday at feed time he

was running around the stall and that's how he was leading up to the Louisiana

Derby. I was happy to see that and I'll be even more happy if I see it this

afternoon. Right now he looks just the same as if he'd only galloped.

"Between Louisiana and Palm Meadows, before we came here, he kept all his

weight. Even shipping back and forth, all that stuff, he didn't miss an oat.

Sometimes, even when they're eating, you still see them and think they might be

a little ribby and that maybe the race took a little something out of them. A

horse can lose as much as 100 pounds from a race. But between that and putting

him on a van and everything else he kept his weight and he looks fantastic."

At the Fair Hill Training Center in Elkton, Maryland, Dianne D. Cotter's

homebred TOBY'S CORNER (Bellamy Road), winner of the Wood Memorial (G1), breezed

six furlongs in 1:15 Sunday morning over the Tapeta surface.

"It was very non-eventful. It went exactly how I hoped it would," trainer

Graham Motion said. "Basically, it is exactly what we did with him before the

Wood Memorial."

Although no split times were available, Motion said the colt did the work

under exercise rider James Slater the way he preferred it go.

"The most important thing to me was that he didn't go off too fast and that

he finished up nicely," Motion said. "That's exactly what he did."

Toby's Corner is scheduled to walk Monday and will be shipped by van to

Churchill Downs on Tuesday.

Gary Barber, Roger Birnbaum and Kevin Tsujihara's speedy Grade 1 winner COMMA

TO THE TOP (Bwana Charlie) put in his final preparations for his run in

Saturday's Kentucky Derby several thousand miles away from Churchill Downs on

the West Coast Sunday.

The Peter Miller trainee skipped through a five-furlong drill at Hollywood

Park in 1:00 2/5 at 8 a.m. (PDT). It was the 20th fastest of 67 works at the

distance on the Cushion Track, but earned the "breezing" designation to denote

his ease of traveling.

The Florida-bred gelding had his scheduled Derby rider, Patrick Valenzuela,

aboard for the exercise.

"I loved it," Miller said, speaking from his Hollywood Park barn shortly

after the move. "I loved it and so did Patrick. He's ready now."

While Valenzuela has eight previous go-rounds in the Run for the Roses,

including a victorious one in 1989 with the flashy Sunday Silence, this Derby

outing will be a first for Miller, a 44-year-old Californian who has been around

horses most of his life, but out on his own as a public trainer only since 2004.