Mountain Town No Longer On the Derby Trail

Placing 84th in graded ranking at the start of this year and a fairly impressive 2010 season makes it all the more shocking that Mountain Town has not been seen on the racing circuit this year. This colt broke his first maiden, taking first place in the Saratoga last year, and moved on to a second place finish next to Uncle Mo at the grade one Champagne and finished the year out placing third in the grade two Remsen next to To Honour and Serve and Mucho Macho Man. He certainly proved his strength as a two-year old, standing with one of the top favorites of the year and some other stiff competition.


Mountain Town was sired by the Florida Derby winner, Cape Town. Even more impressive is the pedigree coming from dam, Mountain Bird, second in the Beaumont Stakes and the half-sister to Bird Town, a champion filly and also to Birdstone, a Belmont and Travers winner. This fine colt’s pedigree lends well to strength on the dirt track and perhaps gave Mountain Town his strength in the Saratoga. As it seems, this colt has the potential to become a Derby contender, based on last year’s performance.


So where is he? Coming as a shock to all, Mountain Town’s trainer, Richard E. Dutrow Jr., decided to pull this colt from the 2011 Derby trail. “He’s on the shelf for now,” said Dutrow. “He just wasn’t doing that good so we backed him off and sent... more him out to the farm in Kentucky. He won’t be able to make the Kentucky Derby.” A non-contender? Say it isn’t so! Coming from a rather strong 2010 season, placing three for three starts, what went wrong with this colt? There has been no mention of injury sustained; only an indication that training over his long layoff was not going well at all.


This is the third colt this year to be pulled from the circuit, but thankfully for Dutrow and his team it is not due to injury. Perhaps we will see him on the racing scene again come summer this year, after a good solid hiatus and some additional training. Word on the racing circuit in watching Mountain Town race, was that he appeared to be impulsive and hard to handle on the track. Could the changes in jockey have anything to do with this colt’s rocky performances, after all, his start to last year was with a different jockey than in the remaining races of last year and beginning of this year.


One could speculate through to May, but the simple fact is that there will probably be no solid answers given about Mountain Town. And rightly so, if training has been rocky, that is enough of an explanation and reason to keep him out of the Derby preps and the
Kentucky Derby itself. The hope is that Dutrow can get things back on track over the next few months and we will see Mountain Town’s re-appearance sooner than later.