Three significant Kentucky Derby prep races took place Feb. 1, each offering 20 Derby points to the winner.

• In the Withers at Aqueduct, the lightly raced Captain Cook made it two wins in three starts after pressing the pace and then drawing off to a 2 1/4-length win under jockey Manny Franco.
• In Gulfstream’s Holy Bull, Burnham Square earned the 20 points by rallying from last to win by 1 ¾ lengths with Edgard Zayas up.
• In the Bob Baffert Invitational Robert B. Lewis Stakes at Santa Anita, Bob Baffert’s three runners filled out the top three starts in the paltry five-horse field. Favored Citizen Bull got the money by nearly four lengths under Martin Garcia to boost his point total to 60, by far the most of any horse.

THEY SAID IT

Rick Dutrow, back on the Derby trail with Captain Cook, said of his charge, who earned a 94 Beyer speed figure: “I don’t care about Beyers. He’s a very relaxed horse, and we’re very lucky to have him. He’s a pleasant surprise. He was running against better horses and when he broke his maiden with us, he liked the track well enough, but we don’t really know if he beat anything that day. Facing these guys yesterday, there were horses that had the credentials to run big. Our horse just ran a big race, man.”

Ian Wilkes, trainer of Burnham Square, who won for the second time since adding blinkers: “The key is the blinkers. I had to put the blinkers on because he wasn’t helping me at all. I had to help him. He wouldn’t help the jockey. He wouldn’t start running in the race. He’d run away from horses, wouldn’t run into the dirt. He did everything wrong.”

Martin Garcia, rider of Citizen Bull, who bobbled at the start of the Lewis: “He was fresh. When I was warming him up, he just wanted to go and you could see that he was ready. When the gates opened it was like the ground broke underneath him. He just broke too fast. But right away he recovered.”

NOTES

Last year’s two-year-old champion, Citizen Bull made his first start of the season and earned his fourth win in five career outings to go with earnings above $1.4 million… Baffert has three of the top nine horses in Derby points, with Citizen Bull’s 60 easily enough to guarantee a spot in the starting gate in Louisville. The Lewis runner-up, Rodriguez, another Baffert trainee, is one of a bunch of horses with 10 points tied for 20^th… Midlantic-breds finished second and third in the Withers. Outsider Surfside Moon (33-1), a Pennsylvania-bred trained by Chuckie Lawrence for Manor Stable and Mair Lee Stables, rallied from mid-flight to finish a clear second in his first start since November. And Omaha Omaha, bred in Virginia, rallied from last to be a non-threatening third for jockey Raul Mena and trainer Mike Gorham. Surfside Moon now has 10 Derby points, while Omaha Omaha has 11…

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