Scotus Rallies to Score Matt Winn

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Photo: Mathea Kelley

Scotus pulls away to take the Matt Winn.
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Peter Callahan’s Scotus made a winning stakes debut June 18 when he took over inside the sixteenth-pole to score by one length in the $138,500 Matt Winn (gr. III) (VIDEO) for 3-year-olds at Churchill Downs.

Scotus, a son of Successful Appeal  , covered 1 1/16 miles on the good dirt in 1:44.12 under Alan Garcia. He is trained by the red-hot Ken McPeek, who one race later would win the Regret Stakes (gr. IIIT) with Bizzy Caroline and has won the last five Churchill graded stakes that he has entered at Churchill.

Bred in Kentucky by Mike Rutherford and out of the Seattle Slew mare Devine, Scotus entered the race off a runner-up allowance effort June 5 at Churchill. He also placed in two other allowance tilts before that try, but McPeek had just enough confident that he was ready for his first stakes try.

“I came very close to scratching him," McPeek said. " I debated all morning long whether this was the right spot for him or not. We were thinking that we were going to scratch if Joe Vann stayed in and we would run in the starter allowance tomorrow. Finally I called Pete Callahan and said, ‘These are the races we like winning and these are the kind of races we need to run in. Let’s just go with it.’”

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