It’s Fathers’ Day as The Padre wins Del Mar Derby

DEL MAR — The Padre took over in the stretch under Umberto Rispoli Sunday afternoon to win the Grade II Del Mar Derby and give trainer Phil D’Amato three stakes wins over the weekend.

Amato scored two wins on Saturday’s undercard to the Pacific Classic with record-setting Gold Phoenix taking the Grade II Del Mar Handicap for an unprecedented fourth straight year and Motorious winning the Grade III Green Flash for a third straight year (via disqualification).

The Padre gained his second Del Mar stakes win this month in just his third start on this side of the Atlantic. Rispoli and the 3-year-old Irish-bred also teamed to win the La Jolla Handicap on May 3. Both races started from the chute on the turf course.

The Padre was fourth in the field of five and outside on the far turn of the 1 1/8-mile race when he made his move, passing Game Warrior coming off the turn and overtaking Geometry and race-long leader Freedom’s Not Free in the stretch — finishing a length ahead of Juan Hernandez and Freedom’s Not Free.

“I’m extremely impressed with this horse,” D’Amato said of The Padre, whose next appearance could be in the Grade I Hollywood Derby at the end of Del Mar’s fall meeting. “We’ll just work around that, make him a Grade I winner and develop him for next year,” D’Amato continued.

“The pace was slow, I could tell that,” said Rispoli. “But I had a handful of horse. I wasn’t concerned. When I asked, he answered.”

“He’s not a pace horse,” said D’Amato. “But he has a tremendous turn of foot. He’s a real racehorse.”

Earlier, Hernandez rode the Bob Baffert-trained 2-5 favorite Citizen Bull to a wire-to-wire, 5½-length win over Smooth Cruisein in the $125,000 Shared Belief Stakes – a one-mile test for 3-year-olds on the main track.

“He was back to a distance he really loves,” said Baffert, who said Citizen Bull is being pointed toward the Breeders’ Cup Mile. “You saw the champion Citizen Bull today. It was good to see him put on a show. I told Juan, ‘Come back with bugs on your teeth,’ ”

Said Hernandez: “He’s a good horse. When he recovers well from this race, I think he can go anywhere.”

Hernandez and Baffert teamed for two more wins Sunday as the rider beat back a challenge by Antonio Fresu in the jockey race. Both finished with three winners on the day..

Hernandez goes into the final four days of the summer meeting with a 38-35 advantage.

Fresu had moved into a tie for the lead at 35-35 by winning three of the first five races with Tariff ($4.20) in the first, Last Call Zondlo ($11.40) in the fourth and Unbinding ($5.60 in the fifth).

But Hernandez finished the day with four wins — Citizen Bull ($2.80), Baffert’s 2-year-old Kristofferson ($4.20 in the sixth), Mayacama ($7.80) in the seventh and Kikuride ($4.40) in the 11th.

Sixteen of Hernandez’s 38 wins this meeting have come aboard horses trained by Baffert, who leads the trainers with 19 wins (three more than D’Amato and Mark Glatt). Nine of the 16 Hernandez-Baffert wins have come with 2-year-olds.

Two stakes Monday

Monday’s special Labor Day card features two $100,000, dirt stakes races — the one-mile Tranquility Lakes for older fillies and mares and the Generous Portion, a 5½-furlong sprint for Cal-bred 2-year-old fillies. Baffert has three of the eight entries in the Tranquility Lake to two for rival D’Amato.

• Baffert’s Spendora (Hernandez), who is coming off a July 24 allowance win at Del Mar after back-to-back runnerup finishes in Grade II stakes at Santa Anita, is the 8-5 morning-line favorite over D’Amato’s One Magic Philly (Fresu), who has won two of three previous Del Mar starts.

• John Sadler’s Mohaven (Hector Berrios) has a win and a second-place finish in two maiden special weight races at Del Mar earlier this summer and is a narrow morning-line favorite over Peter Miller’s What’s A Good Name (Hernandez), who also has a win and a second in two Del Mar starts this meeting.

Notable

Gold Phoenix’s fourth straight win in Saturday’s Del Mar Handicap made more than local history. The Phil D’Amato-trained, 7-year-old gelding joined Hall of Famers Exterminator, Kelso and Forego as the only four horses in the history of American racing to win the same race four straight years. Kelso’s four straight came in the Jockey Club Gold Cup (1960-64), Forego’s in the Woodward (1974-77) and Exterminator’s in the Saratoga Cup (1919-22).

• Paco Lopez might be the runaway leading jockey at New Jersey’s Monmouth Park. But he didn’t have a good day at Del Mar Saturday. He had Reef Runner under the wire first in the Green Flash Stakes, but was disqualified and dropped to second for an incident at the start of the race with declared winner Motorious. Then Lopez was aboard Indispensable in the Pacific Classic, of whom trainer John Sadler said: “He didn’t really get a great trip.” Then on Sunday, stewards suspended Lopez for three days for the Reef Runner-Motorious incident.