Elmont, NY (Sports Network) – Boisterous will fill in for stablemate Point of Entry in Saturday’s 55th running of the $600,000 Man o’War Stakes at Belmont Park. The 6-year-old will face seven challengers in the 1 3\/8-mile turf race.<\/p>\n
With 2012 Man o’War winner Point of Entry sidelined with an injury, trainer Shug McGaughey is going with Boisterous for owner Phipps Stable. The horse will start from post 6 with Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez again riding.<\/p>\n
“We’ll see,” said McGaughey. “He’s never won a Grade 1; he’s been third twice (2011 Man o’War and 2012 Manhattan). We’ve always thought he was a Grade 1 kind of horse.”<\/p>\n
Boisterous won the Monmouth Stakes in his most recent start on grass. In April he was second on Keeneland’s artificial main track to Successful Dan in the Ben Ali.<\/p>\n
“His race in Lexington on the Polytrack was great,” said McGaughey. “There was no pace, and we were four or five lengths back turning for home and got beat a length. Then, he came back and ran really well down at Monmouth and has done real well since then.”<\/p>\n
The 6-year-old is the winner of 10 of his 24 career starts for $937,910<\/p>\n
Trainer Dale Romans has Donegal Racing’s Finnegans Wake set for the Man o’War. The 4-year-old colt will be ridden by Luis Saez from post 5. Saez is the fifth different jockey for the colt in as many races.<\/p>\n
On Belmont Stakes Day, Finnegans Wake was fourth to Point of Entry in the Manhattan Handicap after beginning the year with a third at Churchill Downs in an allowance race.<\/p>\n
Finnegans Wake has two wins in 13 career starts for $336,777.<\/p>\n
Optimizer comes into the Man o’War off a second in the Manhattan. Trained by D. Wayne Lukas for Calumet Farm, the 4-year-old colt will be ridden Saturday by Joel Rosario from the rail.<\/p>\n
With Rosario in the saddle for his last three starts, Optimizer was second at Churchill in the Turf Classic, third in Pimlico’s Dixie along with the Manhattan result.<\/p>\n
Optimizer can surpass the $1 million mark with at least a second-place finish. He has earned $897,037 with five wins in 26 lifetime starts.<\/p>\n
Here is the field for the Man o’War in post position order: Optimizer, Joel Rosario; Speaking of Which, Jose Lezcano; Folk Singer, Jose Espinoza; Twilight Eclipse, Javier Castellano; Finnegans Wake, Luis Saez; Boisterous, John Velazquez; Al Khali, Junior Alvarado and Exclusive Strike, Irad Ortiz Jr.<\/p>\n
The Man o’War has an approximate post-time of 5:17 p.m. (ET).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Elmont, NY (Sports Network) – Boisterous will fill in for stablemate Point of Entry in Saturday’s 55th running of the $600,000 Man o’War Stakes at Belmont Park. The 6-year-old will face seven challengers in the 1 3\/8-mile turf race. With 2012 Man o’War winner Point of Entry sidelined with an injury, trainer Shug McGaughey is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9542"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9542\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}