No Place Like Home for Woodford Presented by TVG Winner Leinster

Amy Dunne, Brenda Miley, Westrock Stables and Jean Wilkinson’s Leinster continued to show his affinity for the Keeneland turf course by posting a half-length victory in Saturday’s $150,000 Woodford (G2) Presented by TVG.

“He likes it firm and he likes any turf course,” trainer Rusty Arnold said of Leinster, the course record holder at 5½ furlongs whose lone loss in four starts here came in last year’s Woodford. “Here he gets to run out of his own barn, and I think that means more than the course.”

Saturday’s victory should be enough to earn Leinster a return trip to the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint (G1) here on Nov. 7. Last year at Santa Anita, Leinster finished seventh in that race.

Finishing second for the fifth time in a graded stakes was DARRS, Inc.’s Extravagant Kid.

“He’s going to get one eventually,” trainer Brendan Walsh said of the elusive graded stakes score.

Walsh said he hasn’t ruled out a possible Breeders’ Cup run.

“We’ll see what happens the next couple weeks, but I’m not ruling anything out,” Walsh said.

Should that first graded stakes win come in the Breeders’ Cup, would that make up for all the near misses?

“It would make up for it tenfold,” Walsh said.