Patriarch to be a handful today
Published:Saturday | September 12, 2020 | 12:09 AMAinsley Walters/Gleaner Writer
IT will be catch-me-if-you-can again for speedy PATRIARCH in this afternoon’s open allowance/graded stakes at five and a half furlongs. Hardly three Saturdays ago, PATRIARCH pulled a disappearing act on half the field he again faces, going the exact distance, with less weight.
Ridden by Robert Halledeen and carrying 126lb, PATRIARCH defied topweight to wire a closing CHACE THE GREAT; an outsped UNIVERSAL BOSS; early pursuer, FATHER PATRICK; and outclassed PRINCE CHARLES, to stamp his claim as the quickest horse at the park, winning by a half-length in warp-speed time of 1:04.4.
Halledeen was motionless in the saddle with topweight, cutting into lane four lengths clear of a ridden FATHER PATRICK, who simply gave up the chase inside the final half-furlong, where he was relegated by CHACE THE GREAT.
None of CHACE THE GREAT, UNIVERSAL BOSS, FATHER PATRICK, or PRINCE CHARLES ran bad races. PATRIARCH simply had no matching speed to test his opening quarter of 22.3 and a crippling 45.0, on an already fast track, which had him two and a half lengths clear a furlong out.
There is absolutely no reason to question whether trainer, Fitzgerald Richards, will present PATRIARCH in the same form. Richards’ intentions are absolutely clear, summoning claiming apprentice Oshane Nugent, who, in reality, is a veteran at the track, to clip seven pounds off the 126lb PATRIARCH had carried with Halledeen.
Newcomers to the class, ACTION RUN and CRYPTOCURRENCY, at 111lb and 115lb, respectively, are too close in the handicaps to PATRIARCH’s 119lb to even be considered threats. Neither has a clue to a 45.0 split and won’t know what hit them for the first half-mile.
However, DaCosta should wrap a three-timer, with TOMOHAWK closing the 11-race card in the I’msatisfied Trophy at nine furlongs and 25 yards. TOMOHAWK has had the measure of his only possible threat, MONEY MONSTER, at two and three years old, and has four runs under his girth off the COVID-19 lay-up, including a fourth-place finish in the 2000 Guineas.
SWEET TOPPINS should be a lonely winner for the former 18-time champion trainer and his two-year-old debutant, DEN STREET (Northern Giant-All For Pleasure), got the better of ROJORN DI PILOT at exercise recently and was only a length behind LOOSE BALL on the round course, clocking 1:00.0 for a five-furlong gallop.