No Kentucky Derby Bid For Heart Of Honor But Osborne Reveals Preakness Option

[Wandering Eyes]

Heart Of Honor (GB) (Honor A.P), who came agonisingly close to providing the Osborne family with an emotional victory in the UAE Derby at Meydan last week, has been nominated for the Triple Crown. However, trainer Jamie Osborne has revealed that the Kentucky Derby would come too soon for the Jim and Claire Bryce-owned colt who went down by just a nose to Admire Daytona (Jpn) (Drefong) in the Group 2 contest. 

“We're not going to go to Kentucky,” Osborne told TDN Europe. “The turnaround is just too quick on the horse but we are very much considering the Preakness and, if that went well, Belmont. It's not cast in stone and there are a lot of things that need to be sorted out. We also need to be sure that the horse is in good enough form to travel and take his chance. But it's something that Jim and Claire would like to do as long as we are happy with the horse. And I think it's a good idea.”

Asked how Heart Of Honor came out of the UAE Derby tussle, Osborne added, “It's early days yet but he arrived home on Monday evening and hasn't been doing a lot this week. But he looks well and is eating and drinking well. You've got to remember that, one of the difficulties surrounding this horse is that he's got to reacclimatise himself to being here. He was in Dubai for five months-it's not like he just shipped in for the race last week. So we don't have to make any firm decisions just yet but we'd like to travel if we think it's the right thing to do.”

Heart Of Honor went from strength to strength in Dubai over the past five months. Bought for €160,000 from Meadowview Stables at the Arqana Breeze-Up Sale with a view towards running in the top dirt races in the Middle East, he more than lived up to that billing by winning two of his six starts and accumulating close to £300,000 in prize-money to date. Last week's effort represented a career-best, yet some criticism was levelled towards Osborne's daughter and stable jockey Saffie for the narrow defeat. 

Osborne explained, “Look, whenever a horse is beaten by only an inch or two, there will always be some clever fella who will say where you could have changed things. In reality, any jockey that gets beaten that distance, will go back and look at where they could have made a difference but the benefit of hindsight is a wonderful thing. I felt that Saffie was very good on the horse, who has always had a little tendency to roll right–he did it in one of his earlier races as well.”

He added, “Funnily enough, I re-watched his breeze from Arqana the other day and he rolled right in that as well. If he hadn't done that, he may well have won. It was a tough pill to swallow. For Jim and Claire and for Saffie, I was gutted. For Saffie, it would have been a wonderful achievement and she could probably have done with a little boost at the moment. But Jim and Claire have just been tremendous supporters of ours and I couldn't even consider training horses like Heart Of Honor without their considerable investment. But now that the dust has settled, we can take heart that we have a decent horse and hopefully we have a horse for the future who might be back in the Middle East next year and the year after in a Saudi Cup or maybe a Dubai World Cup.”

The defection of Heart of Honor allows Repole Stable's GII Wood Memorial Stakes runner-up Grande (Curlin) to slide into the Derby field.

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