Looking Ahead: Kentucky Derby hopefuls Poster and Smoken Boy

Feb 07, 2025 Sara Dacus/TwinSpires.com

The Road to the Kentucky Derby makes its first of two stops at Tampa Bay Downs on Saturday. The Sam F. Davis S. awards qualifying points to the top five finishers on a 20-10-6-4-2 scale.

One of the favorites in the 10-horse field is Poster, who is unbeaten in three career starts. In his last out, the chestnut colt collected 10 Derby points in the Remsen S. (G2) at Aqueduct, beating Chad Brown-trained Aviator Gui in a photo finish. With this win, jockey Flavien Prat registered his 80th stakes win of 2024 and set the single-season stakes record. Prat is committed to ride John Hancock in the Sam F. Davis for trainer Brad Cox, so Antonio Gallardo will be in the irons for Poster’s three-year-old bow.

Prior to the Remsen, Poster won his debut in August at Ellis Park before posting a three-length win in October at Keeneland. Both races were on turf.

🌹 Poster takes the G2 Remsen at Aqueduct at 9/2 and remains undefeated!

Eoin Harty trains for @godolphin and Flavien Prat was aboard. pic.twitter.com/44XnonvES7

— TwinSpires Racing 🏇 (@TwinSpires) December 7, 2024

Poster shipped to Tampa and recorded a bullet workout at the track on Sunday.

He is owned and bred by Godolphin, the stable of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai. Godolphin has won the last five Eclipse Awards as outstanding owner, but the operation has not won the Kentucky Derby. Trainer Eoin Harty is a fifth-generation horseman who came to America from Ireland at 17. He was an assistant to Hall of Famer Bob Baffert for seven years before going out on his own in 2000. He also enters Very Bold in the Sam Davis, who was third in Tampa’s Pasco S.

Smoken Boy arrives from Puerto Rico with Derby dreams, where he was a leading juvenile last season. He won the Clasico Agustin Mercado Reveron S. (G1) on a muddy track at Camarero by 9 1/4 lengths. His other two career starts came in maiden races on the same oval: He lost the first by a nose and was victorious in the second by 6 3/4 lengths. The gray colt is 20-1 on the Sam Davis morning line.

Smoken Boy is trained by Jose Francisco D’Angelo, who earned his first graded stakes win in last year’s running of the Sam F. Davis with No More Time. D’ Angelo also trained Jesus’ Team, runner-up in both the 2020 Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile (G1) and the 2021 Pegasus World Cup Invitational Stakes (G1). Smoken Boy will be ridden by Paco Lopez.

Three other stakes races are on the card, including the Suncoast S., a qualifying race for the Kentucky Oaks.