STREET SENSE AND GREAT HUNTER TO MEET AGAIN
Taken from The Thoroughbred Times
By Jeff Lowe
Street Sense and Great Hunter, who traded Grade 1 wins as two year-
olds last fall, will cross paths again on Saturday in a final stop
leading into the spring classics in the $750,000 Toyota Blue Grass
Stakes (G1) at Keeneland Race Course.
Great Hunter won the Lane’s End Breeders’ Futurity (G1) at
Keeneland on October 7 in the first Grade 1 race ever run on a
synthetic surface. The APTITUDE colt
is back in Lexington for the first Polytrack edition of the Blue
Grass, the signature race of the Keeneland spring meet.
Street Sense finished third in the Breeders’ Futurity, before
igniting for a ten-length victory in the Bessemer Trust Breeders’
Cup Juvenile (G1) on November 4 at Churchill Downs, which earned
him the Eclipse Award as champion two-year-old male. Great Hunter
finished third in the Juvenile, 121.4 lengths behind Street
Sense.
Great Hunter and Street Sense have both raced once since the
Juvenile. Great Hunter won the Robert B. Lewis Stakes (G2) on March
3 at Santa Anita Park, two weeks before Street Sense edged Any
Given Saturday by a nose after a prolonged stretch duel in the
Tampa Bay Derby (G3). Trainer Carl Nafzger was pleased that Street
Sense did not have it easy in his first start in more than four
months.
“We needed that race,” Nafzger said. “I was scared Any Given
Saturday would burst away from us and we’d come down the lane five
or six lengths behind him and not get the race we needed. I knew
when they hooked up that we’d get the race we needed. He needed a
tough race.”
Nafzger has been pointing Street Sense to the Blue Grass since
the Juvenile, even though the race has not produced a Kentucky
Derby winner since Thunder Gulch in 1995. No horse has won both the
Blue Grass and Derby since Strike the Gold in 1991.
“I’ve never won the Blue Grass and it’s always been a race that
I’ve wanted to win,” said Nafzger, who has 19 career stakes
victories at Keeneland. “The second reason is that I can ship right
over from Churchill [Downs] and ship back that night. The third
reason is that we’ve now got the Polytrack here. You don’t have to
worry about the weather.”
Rain fell during another crisp morning at Keeneland on Wednesday
when post positions were drawn for the 11.8-mile Blue Grass.
Forecasts predict a 70% chance of rain on Saturday afternoon.
Street Sense and Great Hunter are the only graded stakes winners in
the field of seven for the Blue Grass.
Date:
12 April 2007