Gotham Stakes: El Areeb Takes the “Easy” Road to the Derby
The Gotham Stakes is the “other” race this weekend on the Road to the Kentucky Derby. Ten runners will go postward in the G3 Gotham in what appears to be a rerun of the last months Withers won by El Areeb.
In the Withers El Areeb entered the starting gate as the heavy favorite off 4 consecutive victories and did not disappoint at $0.50 on the dollar. He’ll face the Withers runner-up and third place finishers in True Timber and J Boys Echo respectively. But neither appear to be any match for El Areeb who is looking for his 5th win in a row and the lions share of the $300,000 Gotham Stakes purse.
If El Areeb is successful, he’ll add $180,000 to his prize money and earn the 50 points he’ll need to take the top spot from the Risen Star winner Girvin on the Kentucky Derby leaderboard.
Interestingly, of the other nine runners in the Gotham, True Timber, second in the Withers to El Areeb, is not the second choice in the field. That stat goes to Cloud Computing (5-1) who’ll be making his second lifetime start off a 6 furlong maiden score here on February 11.
Cloud Computing is the son of Maclean’s Music and trained by Chad Brown for Klaravich Stables, et al. and will again be ridden by Manuel Franco. He’ll be making his first start around two turns.
True Timber, second in the Withers, is listed at 6-1 in the field for the Gotham. And J Boys Echo, third-place in the Gotham Stakes last time out, will open at 8-1 for the jockey and trainer combination of Robbie Albarado and Dale Romans.
The G3 Gotham Stakes will be El Areeb’s third start over the Aqueduct inner where history tells us that not since 1973 when Secretariat won the Gotham has the winner gone on to take the Kentucky Derby.
And it’s a long stretch to imagine El Areeb going on to win the Roses by taking the “easy” Road to the Kentucky Derby over the inner track at Aqueduct.
The forecast for South Ozone Park, NY is for temperatures in the 30’s with 0% chance of rain.
