Kentuckian Draws Attention at Golden Gate

While Shared Belief was still in the paddock before the Santa Anita Handicap (gr. I) March 7, about 350 miles north, another Jerry Hollendorfer protégé was emerging.

In the first start of his career, Fox Hill Farms' Kentuckian broke from the gate in the day's final race at Golden Gate Fields while the spotlight was fully on his barnmate .

A 3-year-old son of Tiznow  , 3-5 favorite Kentuckian settled into an easy lead in a six-furlong maiden special weight event and pulled away from his seven opponents in a visually impressive 11-length triumph.

After Kentuckian clocked fractions of :22.64 and :45.65 through a half-mile, jockey Russell Baze took a peek behind at the five-sixteenths pole and simply opened the gray colt up. He was timed in :57.17 for five furlongs and finished off the three-quarter-mile test in 1:08.96 on the Tapeta main track.

"He wasn't getting along with the Santa Anita racetrack the way we wanted him to," Hollendorfer said on the Thoroughbred Los Angeles Radio Show March 8. "We decided to send him up there and we decided to run him up there, and it worked out well."

Bred in Kentucky by Stonestreet Thoroughbred Holdings out of the multiple graded stakes-winning Unbridled's Song mare Forest Music, the colt trained gradually longer building up to the race, with bullet six-furlong workouts in 1:13 4/5 and 1:13 3/5, March 1 and Feb. 24, respectively.

Going forward, the colt will likely enter in an allowance race at Santa Anita Park in four or five weeks, according to Fox Hill owner Rick Porter.

"I told Jerry I didn't want to do anything other than to run him in an allowance race yet," Porter said. "We like to go a little slower than most. We can build from there, get him a little confidence, and if he performs well, then we can start looking at something bigger."

Porter also noted Kentuckian's foot problems, similar to Shared Belief, are the reason he is training at Golden Gate, so he can be under the expert care of Hollendorfer's wife, Janet.

"When Jerry got him, he fell in love with him, but we had a quarter crack problem that lingered on a lot longer than we thought," Porter said of the colt's delayed debut.

Kentuckian was a $610,000 purchase by Fox Hill via agent Tom McGreevy at the 2013 Keeneland September yearling sale. Taylor Made Sales Agency consigned the gray or roan colt on behalf of his breeder.