New Kent, VA (Sports Network) – War Dancer, ridden by Alan Garcia, rallied through the stretch and won a photo finish over a pair of rivals to capture Saturday’s $500,000 Virginia Derby at Colonial Downs.<\/p>\n
Trained by Ken McPeek for his Magdalena Racing, War Dancer caught and passed 3-1 second choice Charming Kitten with 100 yards to run and also held off the late running 7-2 third pick Jack Milton to win the 1 1\/4-mile turf race for 3- year-olds<\/p>\n
The pace was set by 14-1 longshot Redwood Kitten with 5-2 favorite Rydilluc pressing the leader from the outside. Charming Kitten was sitting off the pace with Jack Milton racing in mid-pack. Rydilluc, Charming Kitten and Jack Milton were the first three under the wire in last month’s Penn Mile.<\/p>\n
War Dancer, who did not race as a 2-year-old, gained ground around the final turn and joined the leaders at the top of the stretch. Sent off at 7-1, War Dancer was able to post a head victory over Charming Kitten who edged out Jack Milton for second.<\/p>\n
Completing the order of finish were Draw Two, Redwood Kitten, Fear the Kitten, Readyshakego, Rydilluc, Gefest and Bethel.<\/p>\n
The time over a ‘good’ turf course was 2:03.57.<\/p>\n
War Dancer notched his first stakes victory and picked up $300,000 for the effort. Since making his debut at Gulfstream Park on Jan. 12, the colt has won three of seven starts for $433,569.<\/p>\n
Six of his seven starts have been on turf. He was third in the American Turf at Churchill Downs on May 3 and second on June 15 in the Centaur Stakes at Indiana Downs. Garcia has been aboard the colt for all but one of the starts.<\/p>\n
War Dancer returned $16.80, $7.40 and $4.40. Charming Kitten paid $4.40 and $2.80, and Jack Milton paid $3.80 to show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
New Kent, VA (Sports Network) – War Dancer, ridden by Alan Garcia, rallied through the stretch and won a photo finish over a pair of rivals to capture Saturday’s $500,000 Virginia Derby at Colonial Downs. Trained by Ken McPeek for his Magdalena Racing, War Dancer caught and passed 3-1 second choice Charming Kitten with 100 […]<\/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-9554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554","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=9554"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9580,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9554\/revisions\/9580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}