Kentucky Derby trail

'TDN Rising Star' Signator (Tapit), eighth on this week's TDN Derby Top 12, has been taken out of training for 60 days and is off the GI Kentucky Derby trail, according to a tweet from co-owner West Point Thoroughbreds. A winner Oct. 14 at the Belmont at Aqueduct meet, Signator was a $1.7-million purchase at last spring's OBS April sale. His latest setback comes after three breezes following a wrenched ankle in the fall. Bred by Gainesway Thoroughbreds and trained by Shug McGaughey, Signator is also owned by the partnership...

There was a time when you would load as much experience and conditioning as possible into a Kentucky Derby horse, as a mere adolescent required to jostle with 19 others through 10 furlongs. Nowadays, however, trainers are trying to reach Churchill Downs across a highwire stretched to a thread by two diametrically opposed imperatives. One is their conviction, whether through perception or presumption, that the typical, commercial-bred Thoroughbred of today can only stand up to a much lighter schedule. The other is to secure enough gate points in the trials....

Led by last term's hard-fought GII Remsen S. winner Mo Donegal (Uncle Mo), a deep field of nine will line up for Saturday's GIII Holy Bull S. at Gulfstream Park. Owned by Donegal Racing and trained by Todd Pletcher, Mo Donegal outslugged Zandon (Upstart) by a nose after a roughly run stretch drive while making his stakes debut in that aforementioned 1 1/8-mile affair at Aqueduct last time Dec. 4. "We decided that the Holy Bull was the right starting point," Pletcher said. "It gives us plenty of options. If...