Owner-trainer Tom McCarthy’s GENERAL QUARTERS (Sky Mesa), a dual Grade 1 winner on turf
and synthetic courses, prepared for a return to racing on Friday with a bullet
four-furlong drill over the fast main track at Churchill Downs Sunday morning.
The gray five-year-old sped a half-mile in :47 4/5, which was the fastest of 55 works
at the distance on the day. Later in the morning, McCarthy dropped General
Quarters’ name in the entry box for Friday’s 9TH race, a seven-furlong allowance race on dirt that will be his first race since a seventh-place finish
in the August 21 Arlington Million (G1) at Arlington Park.
General Quarters posted fractional times of :12 2/5 and :24 2/5 before
galloping out five furlongs in 1:00 4/5,
which compared favorably with the fastest works of the day at that distance.
“He went very nicely,” McCarthy
said. “It was a very good work.”
General Quarters has a career
record of 4-7-2 in 21 races that includes victories in the 2009 Blue Grass
(G1) over the synthetic Polytrack at Keeneland and last year’s Woodford Reserve
Turf Classic (G1) at Churchill. He ran third to eventual Breeders’
Cup Classic (G1) winner and Eclipse Award champion Blame in last season’s Stephen
Foster H. (G1) under the Twin Spires.
General Quarters will have a
challenging task in his return to racing as his six rivals in Friday’s race include a trio of stakes winners. Those horses are
Phoenix S. (G3) hero WISE DAN (Wiseman’s Ferry), eighth last out in the Alysheba
S. (G3); multiple stakes winner NATIVE RULER (Elusive Quality); and stakes
victor GRAND TRAVERSE (Pioneering).
Jockey Jamie Theriot, who has
never ridden General Quarters, has the mount on Friday.