Trainer Todd Pletcher confirmed Sunday that the barn will be represented by recent allowance winner Cards of Stone (Bustin Stones) and GII Tampa Bay Derby runner-up Outwork (Uncle Mo) in Saturday's GI Wood Memorial S. at Aqueduct.
Each horse turned in their respective final move for the $1-million race at their home bases Sunday morning. Cards of Stone breezed five furlongs over the Belmont training track in 1:02 2/5 Saturday, his third work since crushing a field of state-bred allowance/optional claimers by some 13 lengths Mar. 4. Outwork, owned by Repole Stable, will ship up to the Big Apple this week and drilled five-eighths of a mile in 1:00 2/5 Saturday morning at Palm Meadows. It was his second timed move since completing a Pletcher-trained exacta at Tampa behind Destin (Giant's Causeway).
“He's a big, strong colt,” the conditioner said of Outwork. “He stepped up off one six-furlong race and ran a really key race in the Tampa Derby and we hope that that race and the works he's had since then will move him forward.”
In other Wood developments, Tale of S'avall (Tale of Ekati), most recently fifth in the Tampa Bay Derby, went five furlongs in 1:00.05 Sunday morning at Palm Meadows.
“He's doing great,” said Barclay Tagg, who trains the colt for his breeder Charles Fipke. “It was a very nice work in company and we're happy with it. Going a minute, it was just what we were looking for.”
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