Kentucky Derby Horse Profile: Necker Island
By USRacing Team
Why go to the Derby with a horse who’s lost seven in a row by an average of nearly nine lengths and is 0-for-6 in stakes? Only if your lifetime dream is to see your silks in the post parade as they play “My Old Kentucky Home.”
Necker Island won twice last year at Churchill Downs, his home track, but that’s about it for the positives. This vanity entry belongs in an allowance race, not a classic. No chance.
Profiles will be updated with morning-line odds and post position after the field is drawn on Tuesday, Sept. 1.
Odds: TBD
Post position: TBD
Jockey: Miguel Mena
Trainer: Chris Hartman
Owners: Jackie Rojas, Raymond Daniels, Wayne Scherr
Career record: 10-2-0-3
Career earnings: $199,730
Top Equibase speed figure: 99
Kentucky Derby points: 14 (19th)
Pedigree: Hard Spun-Jenny’s Rocket, by Mr. Greeley
Color: Chestnut
Running style: Closer
Necker Island – Courtesy of Coady Photography
Notes: Necker Island picked up his Derby points with third-place finishes in the Indiana Derby (4) and the Ellis Park Derby (10) … The colt was claimed for $100,000 in May … This will be Mena’s second Derby – in 2010 he finished 20th aboard Backtalk … He’s been riding since 2003 and has won more than 2,000 races, among them a victory aboard Tom’s d’Etat in the Stephen Foster in June … Hartman, a Midwest-based journeyman who has been training since 1992, is saddling his first Derby starter.
(USRacing’s Kentucky Derby will include profiles of the horses listed as probable for the race on Saturday, Sept. 5. Each day until the post-position draw on Tuesday, Sept. 1, USRacing will publish selected profiles of the contenders.)