Restoring Hope could join acclaimed stablemate in 'Test of the Champion'; Triple Crown hopeful Justify continues bid to conquer Big Sandy

Restoring Hope could join acclaimed stablemate in 'Test of the Champion'; Triple Crown hopeful Justify continues bid to conquer Big Sandy

Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert could have a second Belmont Stakes contender in Gary and Mary West's Restoring Hope, who could be among the field sent to the gate to run against Baffert's undefeated Triple Crown hopeful Justify in the 1 ½-mile "Test of the Champion" on June 9.

Baffert said the final decision to run will be made in the week leading up to the race, depending on how the colt responds in his morning routine at Churchill Downs.

Still in search of a stakes victory, Restoring Hope worked a sharp 1:00 for five furlongs over the Churchill track Tuesday morning, his second breeze since finishing 12th in the Grade 3 Pat Day Mile on the Kentucky Derby Day undercard on May 5.

In his stakes debut this spring, Restoring Hope ran a promising third to Vino Rosso and Enticed in the Grade 2 Wood Memorial on April 7 at Aqueduct Racetrack.

"He's doing well," Baffert said by phone. "We're going to watch him train and put a few more works in him. He ran really well in the Wood, ran a nice third in there. I think sometimes with the mile and a half, they can get a piece of it. There's a lot of horses that don't want to go that far, and for others they seem to do well. We'll see."

Restoring Hope fell short of making the Kentucky Derby field with 20 points, ranking 22nd on the leaderboard, so Baffert instead sent the colt to run in the Pat Day Mile, where he returned with blinkers for the first time since his second career start, and ran six wide from post 12 and tired atop the sloppy and sealed track under Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith. Unlike Justify, Baffert said the mud may have been harder to handle than the post, but the colt seems to have put that experience behind him.

"I think he had trouble with it," he said. "I thought he was going to run good. He trains well, he's a real good work horse, and he's training well. It seems like he's getting better so we're giving him a chance."

The Giant's Causeway colt missed a first-out victory by a nose in his debut at six furlongs at Los Alamitos on December 17. He then was stretched out to 1 1/16 miles, where he followed up with a third-place finish at Santa Anita on December 30. In his 3-year-old season opener on February 2, he raced without blinkers and cleared the field to break his maiden by 3 ½ lengths at the 1 1/16-mile distance.

The Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Justify galloped 1 ½ miles under Humberto Gomez over the Churchill soil on Friday morning, just the second consecutive day of exercise on the track since he returned from Pimlico after his half-length victory in last Saturday's Grade 1 Preakness Stakes.

"He went an eighth-mile farther than he did yesterday," said assistant trainer Jimmy Barnes, who is overseeing Justify's training at Churchill. "But same speed, just took it easy. It's very nice to gallop out there without the traffic."

The Scat Daddy colt could be just the second undefeated Triple Crown winner among the 12 who have swept the three Classics since Seattle Slew remained perfect through nine starts with his four-length victory in the muddy Belmont Stakes in 1977.

Three of Justify's five career wins, all as a 3-year-old, have come over wet tracks. In his second career start, he beat four others by 6 1/2 lengths in his first race ridden by Smith.

After his three-length win in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Derby, his stakes debut, he met two sloppy and sealed surfaces in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness, and won by 2 ½ lengths and a half-length, respectively.

A victory by Justify in the Belmont Stakes would put him alongside 1948 Triple Crown winner Citation as the only two to win the first two legs of the Triple Crown over wet tracks. That year, the Kentucky Derby was listed as "muddy," and the Preakness that followed two weeks was designated as "heavy."

Citation caught a fast track at Belmont that year on his march to racing immortality, which leaves Justify the chance to be the only winner to capture the Crown over three off tracks should the June 9 Belmont Stakes offer a wet surface.

"These races take a lot out of them," said Baffert. "I think the mud was easier for him than having a firm track. When it's mud, it's not as tiring. Not as taxing as I think a fast or wet-fast track is. Especially when they're not as deep like they are at Belmont. Nothing compares to that Belmont surface. That thing is deep. We don't care. We just want to go up there and can't worry about the track. We just want him to run his 'A' game."