Trainer Rick Dutrow Jr. sat in his Belmont Park office Feb. 2 still basking in the glow of his newly-minted stakes-winner Captain Cook ‘s dominant victory in the $250,000 Withers Stakes at Aqueduct Racetrack Feb. 1, and his emergence on the Triple Crown trail after the effort awarded the colt with the maximum allotment of the 20-10-6-4-2 Kentucky Derby (G1) qualifying points awarded to the top-five finishers.
And while St. Elias Stable’s handsome son of Practical Joke was awarded eye-catching speed figures for the 2 1/4-length coup, Dutrow Jr. said he was more impressed with what the bay overcame as he stretched out from a seven-furlong graduation Dec. 28 at the Big A.
“He’s a very relaxed horse, and we’re very lucky to have him,” Dutrow Jr. said. “He’s a pleasant surprise. He was running against better horses and when he broke his maiden with us, he liked the track well enough, but we don’t really know if he beat anything that day. Facing these guys yesterday, there were horses that had the credentials to run big. Our horse just ran a big race, man.”
The win came in stalking fashion under Manny Franco as the pair sat in third behind the pace set by Uncle Jim , who marked splits of :24.11 and :49.13 before being challenged by Mo Quality through three-quarters in 1:13.64. A well-measured Captain Cook broke a step slow and traveled wide in both turns of the 1 1/8-mile test for sophomores but easily inhaled the frontrunners at the top of the lane and drew off to complete the course in 1:51.83 over the oncoming Surfside Moon .
“He didn’t break so well, and Manny said that he could have went to the lead with him any time he wanted to,” Dutrow Jr. said. “He said he knew the horses that were in front of him were the two main players, but he said, ‘Rick, I had them any time. I could have passed them at the five-eighths pole if I wanted to.’ But there wasn’t any reason to—they had their thing, and they were battling, and he (Captain Cook) was just sitting outside as comfortable as a horse could be.
“We’re lucky that he is the way he is in a race,” Dutrow Jr. added of the colt’s relaxed nature. “He doesn’t have a lot of size to him, and he’s going to need to conserve everything he’s got, but man, he does that. When Manny hopped off of that horse, he said, ‘Rick, I’m starting to dream.'”
Captain Cook debuted in October with a sixth in a six-furlong maiden at Churchill Downs for conditioner Norm Casse before selling to St. Elias for $410,000 at the Keeneland Horses of Racing Age Sale in November. Now a perfect 2-for-2 for his current connections, Captain Cook will look to make his graded debut April 5 at Aqueduct in the $750,000 Wood Memorial (G2), which awards the top-five finishers 100-50-25-15-10 Kentucky Derby points, respectively.
McAfee, Thorpedo Anna’s Half Brother, Working Back from Infection
Dutrow Jr. could see his Derby chances doubled in the coming weeks as Black Type Thoroughbreds, Swinbank Stables, Judy Hicks, and Campeche Stables’ promising colt McAfee works his way back from a small infection that forced him to scratch from the Jan. 4 Jerome Stakes.
McAfee breaks his maiden at Churchill Downs
The son of Cloud Computing is out of the Uncle Mo mare Sataves , making him a half brother to 2024 Horse of the Year Thorpedo Anna . McAfee made a successful Nov. 1 debut to annex a six-furlong restricted maiden at Churchill Downs before a head defeat to finish second in a one-mile starter allowance Nov. 24 at the Louisville, Ky., oval.
McAfee had his first work in almost one month when covering a half-mile in :52 Saturday over the Belmont dirt training track in a move that was met with rave reviews by exercise rider Emily Ellingwood, who frequently exercised multiple grade 1-winner White Abarrio during his tenure with Dutrow Jr.
“Oh, we’re excited about that guy,” Dutrow Jr. said. “He’s doing great. After Emily would breeze White Abarrio for us in California, I could see her molars because she was smiling so much—that’s what happened yesterday when she breezed McAfee. She just loved the feeling the horse gave her.”
Dutrow, Jr. did not commit to a firm plan in the coming weeks for McAfee, but did say the colt could also be on his way to lucrative stakes like the Wood Memorial should he continue to train and race as expected.
“We have a hopeful plan that if he stays the way he is, it could set him up for the Wood and we could have two horses—two live horses—for that race,” Dutrow Jr. said. “That’s never happened to me before, and I like to dream, too.”
This press release has been edited for content and style by BloodHorse Staff.
