Ashbrook Farm’s Wicked Style, winner of the Lane’s End Breeders’ Futurity (gr. I) at Keeneland in October, will not run in the Nov. 24 Kentucky Jockey Club Stakes (gr. II) at Churchill Downs.
“He’s scratched,” trainer Rusty Arnold said Nov. 22. “He breezed the day before yesterday and he was good yesterday, but he wasn’t the way I wanted him this morning. It is not a serious problem, but he is not going to run until next spring.”
Wicked Style finished 10th in the Bessemer Trust Breeders’ Cup Juvenile (gr. I) at Monmouth Park in his most recent start and had been training at Keeneland with two works since the Oct. 27 race. Churchill Downs handicapper Mike Battaglia had installed Wicked Style as the 5-1 co-third choice in the morning line odds for Saturday’s race. Robert LaPenta’s Cool Coal Man is the 5-2 morning line favorite.
“He is going to be out about 60 days. He has a shin,” Arnold said. “It is late in the 2-year-old year to get this, but that is what he has. He will go to Florida on Monday.”
Wicked Style completed his 2-year-old season with a record of 3-0-0 in four starts with earnings of $445,000.
In other news from Churchill, jockey Rafael Mojica, Jr. was transported to Louisville’s Norton Audubon Hospital following a spill at the head of the stretch in the fourth race Nov. 22.
Mojica, 25, was thrown from the saddle when his mount, Midway Station, clipped heels with a rival and fell. The medical team that attended the fallen rider said Mojica was unconscious when they first arrived at the scene of the mishap, but he regained consciousness as he was being attended to.
He was transported to the hospital as a precautionary measure after complaining of shoulder and lower back pain.
Midway Station was reported by the state veterinarian to have suffered a broken shoulder in the mishap and was euthanized on the track. The horse fell after appearing to clip heels with eventual fifth-place finisher Peace Warrior when that horse was bumped by a rival and forced out and into the path of Midway Station.
After viewing replays of the race, track stewards ruled that eventual runner-up Pitton’s Road had bumped Peace Warrior and caused the mishap. Pitton’s Road was disqualified and placed last in the field of 10 horses in the race won by 17-1 shot Loxahatchee.
