Capo Bastone Transferred to Todd Pletcher
Courtesy: DRF | By: David Grening
Todd Pletcher’s roster of soon-to-be 3-year-olds grew deeper Friday night when Capo Bastone, the third-place finisher in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, arrived in the trainer’s barn at the Palm Meadows training center in south Florida.
Previously with John Sadler in Southern California, Capo Bastone went 1 for 4 on that circuit with a maiden win at Del Mar, followed by a fourth-place finish in the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity and a third in the Grade 1 Front Runner at Santa Anita prior to his third in the Juvenile.
Aron Wellman, president of Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners, which owns Capo Bastone, said the 2013 schedule of stakes restricted to 3-year-olds on the East Coast was more appealing to him than that on the West Coast. Wellman said his first objective for Capo Bastone would be the Grade 2, $150,000 Hutcheson Stakes, a seven-furlong race at Gulfstream on Feb. 2.
“We really wanted to run him in early February and we wanted a one-turn race to get him going,” Wellman said.
Further, Wellman said the schedule at Gulfstream offers “better timing, better spacing and a better progression to give him a legitimate chance to hop on the Derby trail and then prove whether he’s a legitimate Derby prospect.”
Capo Bastone, a son of Street Boss, bled when third, beaten 2 1/2 lengths by the Pletcher-trained Shanghai Bobby in the Juvenile. Horses competing in races restricted to 2-year-olds were not permitted to race on Lasix in the Breeders’ Cup.
Wellman said that a few days after the Juvenile, Capo Bastone was sent to the Alamo Pintado Equine Medical Center in Santa Ynez, Calif., where he was under the care of Dr. Doug Herthel.
Wellman said that Capo Bastone spent significant time in a hyperbaric oxygen chamber to help with any “minor scarring of the lung tissue as a result of the bleeding episode in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.”
Capo Bastone adds to a strong roster of potential Kentucky Derby candidates for Pletcher led by stakes winners Shanghai Bobby, Overanalyze, and Violence.