River Seven Earns Triple Crown Respect
Category : News
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Mon 19/08/2013 - 14:16 EDT
While the 2013 Canadian Triple Crown failed to see a champion take all three races with three different winners – Midnight Aria in the Queen’s Plate, Uncaptured in the Prince […]
While the 2013 Canadian Triple Crown failed to see a champion take all three races with three different winners – Midnight Aria in the Queen’s Plate, Uncaptured in the Prince of Wales Stakes, and Up With the Birds in Sunday’s Breeders’ Stakes – it may have produced new-found respect for one of the horses that didn’t win. River Seven, a gelding out of Johannesburg, was the only runner game enough to tackle all three legs of the series, managing to finish second in the last two.
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Grey Stakes win puts Seven on Triple Crown path
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Trained by Nicholas Gonzalez, River Seven came into the Triple Crown with one impressive victory to his credit, a win in the 2012 Grade III (Can.) Grey Stakes last November on Woodbine’s Polytrack. That win, over a field that included Uncaptured, had his connections thinking big, and was enough to launch him on his Triple Crown bid. The Grey proved to be a highwater mark for River Seven, as he was well beaten in his next four starts, including an eighth-place finish in the Plate Trial, and a tenth-place finish in the Queen’s Plate.
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Best of the rest in the final two legs
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Undeterred, Gonzalez sent him to the gate for the second leg, the Prince of Wales at Fort Erie. Forcing the pace, River Seven pressed pacesetter Power Phil through three-quarters, and managed to gain the lead, only to be passed mid-stretch by Uncaptured. In the 1 ½ miles Breeders’ Stakes, River Seven broke slowly, but managed to work his way into contention by the mile marker. Passed by the winner with a quarter-mile to go, he managed to sustain enough of a bid to take the second place money by a neck, the fourth time he's been second in his nine-race career.
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