Stewart preps colt for Preakness, Belmont

Trainer Dallas Stewart said maiden winner Tale of Verve, who was left out of the Kentucky Derby after two injury-related scratches occurred after the deadline to get in the field, is under consideration for the Preakness Stakes – as a prep for the Belmont Stakes.

Tale of Verve won a 1 3/16-mile maiden race at Keeneland in his sixth start.

"I wanted to" get in the Derby, Stewart said Thursday. "I thought he'd have run well. I'm thinking of maybe running him in the Preakness. The track, we always think of it as a little bit on the speed-favoring side, and he's a come-from-behind, one-run horse. I think the Belmont would be better for him, but I don't know if I can keep him fit enough. I might need to run him, get a race in him and be ready for the Belmont. He's kind of a big, lazy-type colt, kind of like Commanding Curve. There's a big shot he could come up empty going a mile and a half (without a race in between)."

Stewart finished second in the prior two Kentucky Derbys with the aforementioned Commanding Curve and Golden Soul.

The trainer said the upcoming allowance race offered at Churchill is too short at 1 1/16 miles.

"There's actually one today here at 1 3/16 miles, but I just wasn't organized in my training to get right in there," he added. "Because I'd worked him and it would have been rush and I don't want to do anything to hurt the horse.

"At this point, I'd say run him in the Preakness – still talking to the owner about this – but my idea is to run him, get a race in him. Hopefully he hits the board, hopefully he wins it, gets a good race and ready for the Belmont, which I think he'd be a factor going that far. That's kind of how I'm thinking now.

"… He's a big, good-looking, strong horse. Well-bred. Mr. (Charles) Fipke owns the mama and the daddy and all this."

Stewart was very high on Tale of Verve all winter in New Orleans and certainly didn't plan on him taking so long to win a race, saying, "a lot of it wasn't his fault."

Asked what makes him think the colt can be successful at this point amid a strong group of 3-year-olds, the trainer said: "You won't know until you try. And we didn't get a chance (last Saturday) to answers those questions."… You can't think about what everybody else has done, how good everybody else is. That has no part of my life and no bearing on what I do."

Stewart said Lemon Drop Title, another maiden winner, could run in Pimlico's Sir Barton on the Preakness undercard.