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Home / Keeneland / Swipe returns in Keeneland’s Lexington Stakes

Swipe returns in Keeneland’s Lexington Stakes

Swipe who last raced in the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Keeneland returns after a 5 month layoff to face nine others hoping to gain attention in the final prep race for the 2016 Kentucky Derby on May 7.

In the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Swipe was sent off at almost 30 to 1 against Florida Derby winner and current Derby favorite Nyquist despite having finished second to him in three graded stakes races. In the Juvenile Swipe was again second best that day and hasn’t been seen since.

But all that changes today as he’ll step onto the track for the G3 $150K Lexington as the 9 to 5 morning line favorite to win with new rider Flavien Prat.

Swipe Runner Up in Last 4

On paper Swipe could be considered second choice to win the Kentucky Derby off 4 consecutive place finishes to Nyquist but considering he only has 12 points going into the Lexington, a win is only worth 10. And a total of 22 isn’t going to be enough to get in as there’s only room for 20 horses and he’d still rank 24th on the leaderboard.

Among Swipe’s toughest challenger’s will be the Baffert trainee Collected who recently won the Sunland Futurity defeating Gettysburg who goes in the Arkansas Derby for Todd Pletcher later today. Collected has three wins and a second from 5 starts and gets the services of Javier Castellano in the Lexington as regular rider Martin Garcia will be aboard Cupid in the Oaklawn feature.

Riker who was fourth in the BC Juvenile two lengths behind Swipe won the first 4 races of his career on the all-weather at Woodbine and should provide the pace for the Lexington. He was sixth in the Tampa Derby behind the two Todd Pletcher runners Destin and Outwork. The later returned to win the G1 Wood Memorial last weekend.

Rounding out the field for the Lexington includes Yo Carm who was an impressive winner in his last at Tampa. He’s a 3YO son of Flatter who went turf to dirt for the first time and took an OC75K/N1X by 6 going 1 mile 40 yards. At 15 to 1 he might be worth a long look.