Georgie Boy & Rafael Bejarano winning the San Vicente (Charles Pravata)

Well, wasn’t today an interesting on the Derby Trail? All three Derby preps won by state breds, two of the three with failing less than even money honest favorites and one with a Lady Trainer!

I’m really curious to see if War Pass is injured, every one has a bad day but that was a serious clunker. He was never in it.

As for Sierra Sunset, it seems as though Oaklawn has breathed some life into him. I’m interested to see what his next move is. Z Fortune and Anak Nakal were nowhere to be found… I suppose not so surprising given Anak Nakal’s last out but a somewhat surprising for Z Fortune.

And then there’s Georgie Boy and his trainer Kathy Walsh. She’s taken a bit of an unconventional approach with him, foregoing temptation at several turns to, in her words, “do what you know is best.”

There was a nice feature on her and Georgie Boy from DRF published on NBC sports this week:

“You’ve got to realize that these horses can’t dance every dance,” Walsh said. “Horses are bred different from years ago. Their pedigrees are different. The tracks are different. That helps make it so tough. Fortunately, I have an owner that respects me and trusts me. We made a pact that if Georgie Boy ran in the Del Mar Futurity, we’d give him time afterwards. He was all for it.”

Walsh was born into a business, working for her father trainer Jim Walsh.

Walsh has been training stakes winners for more than 30 years, since the days of Auguste in the 1974 Governor’s Handicap at Longacres. She came into the sport both privileged, as the daughter of a trainer, and persecuted, for being a woman in a sport whose latent chauvinism exists today, let alone three decades ago.

Best of luck to her and her very talented Georgie Boy! I hadn’t payed him much attention to him until now but I’m going to start. He’s scheduled to start next in the Santa Anita Derby April 5th, but I wish he was running on conventional dirt just once before the Derby!