Practical Move Ices The Win And A Ticket To Kentucky, Mandarin Hero Places, Skinner Shows

Tim Yakteen-trained Practical Move didn’t need much to gain a berth in the Kentucky Derby but worked well under jockey Ramon Vasquez to nose out a win under a big-hearted challenge by Terunobu Fujita-trained Mandarin Hero, pictured above at the finish with the very game show horse, Skinner. Echoing the finish of the Blue Grass Stakes a thousand miles east in Lexington, the Santa Anita contest did not look to be automatically Practical Move’s but Vasquez and his mount managed to stave off a huge challenge by Mandarin Hero, the first Japan-owned horse ever to hit the boards in the California track’s signature Kentucky Derby prep. With he win, Practical Move vaults up to the No. 2 spot, just behind his likely Kentucky rival Forte, in the points standings.

Practical Move went off at 8-5 and paid a flat $4 to win; Mandarin Hero brought a little spice to the payouts, going off at 8-1 and paying $6.60, and the 3-1 show horse, Skinner, paid $2.60. Bluntly put, the trifecta was nothing to write home about.

Santa Anita is Yakteen’s home ground as well as that of his erstwhile mentor Bob Baffert — Baffert having shunted some of his mounts over to Yakteen, a former assistant in the Baffert barn, as Baffert himself began serving out his recent drug-related Derby ban a couple of years ago. Which is not to taint Yakteen or to imply that Mr. Baffert has not increased his watchfulness, but simply to say, Practical Move will stay in California for the moment before shipping to Churchill. Happily, it will be a Kentucky-Derby debut for Practical Move’s owners Pierre and Leslie Amestory as well — they’ve never had a horse compete in the race.

Mandarin Hero, beautifully piloted by jockey Kazushi Kimura, brought a late run, but it was a mighty big one, and he very nearly ran off with the race, passing the more highly touted Skinner in the stretch and almost toppling Practical Move from his perch as the relatively “sure” winner. Had Kimura and Mandarin Hero won, it would definitely have put a new complexion on the top 10 in the Derby standings, a fact sportingly if tacitly acknowledged by both jockeys immediately after the race, as Kimura made a point of congratulating Vasquez, pictured above.

As it was Mandarin Hero provided yet another serious brick in the wall of Japanese horses who have competed exceedingly well internationally this season, beginning the Persian Gulf at Riyadh in the Saudi Cup and at the Dubai World Cup at the Meydan. The message in that big hearted stretch run is that the Japanese horses will be back.