R.E.V. Racing’s Atta Boy Roy , winner of the Churchill Downs Stakes (gr. II), worked a half-mile in :48 over a fast Churchill track Oct. 22 under jockey Calvin Borel in preparation for the Sentient Jet Breeders’ Cup Sprint (gr. I). The move was third fastest of 33 at the distance.
“Calvin was very happy with him,” trainer Valorie Lund said. “He said, ‘He’s back in his house.’ He loves the track here. Now he will come back to work next Saturday, and then I will bring him over Monday or Tuesday of Breeders’ Cup week.”
A $4,500 purchase, the Washington-bred Atta Boy Roy’s road to the Breeders’ Cup actually began last year.
“We had planned to run him in the Breeders’ Cup last year at Santa Anita and we took him out there and ran him (in the Ancient Title) and he hated the Polytrack,” Lund said. “So, we said, ‘No Breeders’ Cup for us this year’ and started planning for next year.”
Since his victory in the Churchill Downs, Atta Boy Roy finished second in the Aristides (gr. III) at Churchill when he broke in the air, finished second in the Iowa Sprint Handicap, and won the Remington Park Sprint Championship before finishing eighth in the Woodford (gr. IIIT) on grass two weeks ago at Keeneland.
“We have been focusing for the one race and getting him there,” Lund said of the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. “There have been no bumps in the road and everything has gone well.”
Atta Boy Roy is one of five confirmed mounts for Borel in the Breeders’ Cup. Other mounts for Borel, whose lone Breeders’ Cup victory came in 2006 in the Juvenile on Street Sense, are A.U. Miner (Marathon), Tell a Kelly (Juvenile Fillies), Hurricane Ike (Dirt Mile), and Seeking the Title (Ladies’ Classic).
