Pletcher Rolling Home

- Pletcher heads back to New York after closing the Keeneland meeting with two more wins on Friday. He took the trainer's title easily with 14 winners, from 47 starters, for an average of 29.8%. The Toddster has bounced back since that bad day on April 5 which had a few people writing his obituary.

With first-time starters at Keeneland, Pletcher was six for ten overall; four for eight with two-year olds, including Pride, the winner of Friday's opener. This filly had worked in company with Mr Mistoffelees, and her winning time was just 2/ths of a second slower than her stablemate's. Pride is also owned by Tabor/Smith, though they paid only $475K for this one. She is, to the best of my knowledge, the first winner for the rookie sire Lion Heart, who cost me the exacta and triple when he ran second to Smarty Jones in the Derby. He stands for Coolmore at Ashford for $20,000.

Lion Heart was three-for-three as a two-old year, including the G1 Hollywood Futurity. He's also a son of an excellent first-out sire in Tale of the Cat, so it may be worthwhile to check out his first crop.

Dancing Forever ($10.60) took the G2 Elkhorn, continuing his advancement for Shug. As I wrote back in February after his last race, this always-trying five-year old son of Rahy could very well be a factor in the turf division this year. Maybe one of these days, I'll get around to betting him.