Two decisive victories to launch his career have the connections of Prevalence considering a start in the Grade 2, $750,000 Wood Memorial presented by Resorts World Casino on April 3 at Aqueduct Racetrack in Ozone Park, N.Y.
Trained by Brendan Walsh, the Godolphin homebred captured plenty of attention with a flashy and effortless 8 ½-length debut triumph going seven furlongs on January 23 at Gulfstream Park. The Medaglia d’Oro colt followed on Thursday at the South Florida oval with a three-length win going a one-turn mile, registering an 86 Beyer Speed Figure.
Jimmy Bell, president of Godolphin’s North American division, said that how Prevalence runs in his next start will be a large deciding factor as to how the horse will be campaigned on the Triple Crown trail.
“His maiden win told us something, his allowance win told us even more and his next race will decide where we go from there. Each race is its own entity,” Bell said. “We’ll all be curious to see what his best distance is. He showed a nice step up from seven-eighths to a mile.”
The Wood Memorial, along with the Grade 1 Arkansas Derby on April 10 at Oaklawn Park and Grade 2 Toyota Blue Grass on April 3 at Keeneland, are among the possible targets for Prevalence’s graded stakes debut. All three races are Kentucky Derby qualifiers awarding 100-40-20-10 points to the top-four finishers.
“It becomes a question of where his energy level is and it comes down to a timing thing,” Bell said. “His past races gave him some good experiences and when asked, he responded professionally.”
A Kentucky homebred, Prevalence is out of the Ghostzapper mare Enrichment – a full-sister to multiple Grade 1-winning millionaire Better Lucky and stakes-winning turf sprinter Final Frontier. All three are out of the graded stakes-winning Seeking the Gold mare Sahara Gold, whose dam was 1995 Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Desert Stormer.
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