Shared Belief will get a full battery of tests after jockey Mike Smith pulled him up before the half-mile pole in Saturday’s $1.5 million Charles Town Classic in West Virginia, won by Moreno.
It was only the second loss of Shared Belief’s 12-race career, but a more pressing concern after the race was his welfare.
Trainer Jerry Hollendorfer told The Daily Racing Form that the gelding, whose only other loss was a controversial fourth in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic, has a problem in his right hind, although he appeared to be otherwise sound during a morning jog at the barn Sunday morning.
Co-owned by celebrity sports talk host Jim Rome, Shared Belief, the 1-5 betting favorite, bobbled out of the gate on the backstretch in the three-turn race and was last of nine passing the grandstand the first time.
It is likely that the injury occurred at the start, and when Smith detected that Shared Belief wasn’t traveling properly, he pulled him up after the second of three turns.
“He just seemed to slip in behind and wasn’t confortable,” Smith told Charles Town. “The safe thing to do at that point was to get back in one piece.”
“When I got to the horse, I saw a little soft tissue swelling at the right stifle,” state veterinarian Elizabeth Daniel said. “We gather it’s something that happened leaving the starting gate.”
For Moreno, who beat 2014 Charles Town Classic winner Imperative by two lengths with new rider Cornelio Velasquez, the victory was his first since last year’s Whitney at Saratoga Race Course.
“I wanted to send for the lead, but the others had more speed,” Velasquez said. “I wanted to keep him busy. I had a lot of horse. At the three-eighths pole, I asked him, and he didn’t stop.”
“It’s not like he doesn’t know how to ride a racehorse,” trainer Eric Guillot said of the 46-year-old Panamanian jockey. “But he listened to the directions and instructions and the logistics of the race perfectly.”
Moreno has just four wins from 26 starts, but earnings of just under $3 million.
General A Rod, owned in part by Don Lucarelli of Duanesburg through Starlight Racing, went off as the 5-1 second choice and never threatened, finishing fifth.
‘DANE’ OUT OF DERBY
Trainer Bob Baffert still has the best hand for the May 2 Kentucky Derby, but lost one of his cards on Saturday when One Lucky Dane suffered a condylar fracture to his left front leg during a workout at Santa Anita Park.
After the colt worked five furlongs in :591⁄5, jockey Rafael Bejarano pulled him up. He was vanned off and hot-walked back at the barn, but
X-rays showed the break, which will require surgery and four months of recovery.
One Lucky Dane had stamped himself as a Derby contender by finishing second in the Santa Anita Derby to stablemate Dortmund. Baffert also has 2-year-old champion colt American Pharoah, who finished his Derby preparation with an eye-catching win in the Arkansas Derby last weekend.
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