Same Jock, Same Trainer: Brian Hernandez Jr., left, and trainer Ian Wilkes, right, after winning the Breeders’ Cup Classic with Fort Larned, in Arcadia, California. The pair went on to win the 2025 Blue Grass Stakes with Burnham Square. (Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
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Burnham Square, who went off at an unchanged 4-1, was not really supposed to win the 2025 Blue Grasss Stakes, before or during the race. In the event, he ran quite a lot of it dead last as East Avenue led the field up the Keeneland backstretch, but he started working up through the field into the second turn — giving ground rather than gaining or saving it is not the most economical way of getting up front. But that didn’t seem to matter a whit to the daring colt. Coming out of the final turn, jockey Brian Hernandez found a seam and got the two of them clear in the stretch.
Though it seemed at the top of the stretch that a more expected challenger, Owen Almighty, was briefly poised to take down East Avenue, it was Burnham Square who had the fuel for the duel. He had a different idea who should take down East Avenue than Owen Almighty. But: Showing admirable grit holding up front for much of the race, and thinking he more or less had it made, East Avenue was to prove no pushover.
It was as if Burnham Square actually had a flashing equine thought about it and consciously took aim at East Avenue in that moment, always a fine aspect for everybody watching a race in which it’s possible to see a horse decide something. The stretch battle was simultaneously excruciatingly slow and blazing fast. Burnham Square ran East Avenue steadily down, catching him, working up beside the leader’s tail, then his flank, coming up along his neck and forequarters, finally hitting the finish in the lead by a remarkable, hard-won nose. East Avenue gamely held on to place, and the expected favorite in the race, Todd Pletcher’s River Thames, showed.
It would be an understatement to say that River Thames’ show run was a disappointment to his connections and to the vast majority who backed him. How, exactly, River Thames came somewhat undone — despite finishing in the money — remains to be analyzed. It didn’t seem an especially bad trip, certainly no worse of a run than many a three-year-old has had in the raucous Kentucky Derby. Somehow, at the end of a mile-and-an-eighth, he just didn’t have the rocket fuel for his afterburners when he really needed it, at the top of the stretch. Diplomatically put, it was the sort of run that would make a Hall of Fame trainer like Todd Pletcher think about whether the horse was truly cut out for the distance, but that noted, the fault can be a more specific one. We’ll hear more about that in the next three weeks, as the connections weigh what to do with the colt.
Burnham Square’s time for the mile-and-an-eighth was 1:51.33, and he paid $10.48. East Avenue paid $6.42, and River Thames paid the expected, low $3.24.
Jockey Brian Hernandez was ready with a lovely tactical compliment for his fellow athlete, saying: “Turning for home, he had a full head of steam. He swapped leads, and he just kept coming and coming and coming. He looks like the further he goes, the better it’ll be.”
That is a very good thing, because, with 130 Derby points now, he’s going to be faced a mile-and-a-quarter against 20 other top colts in three-and-a-half weeks from this blistering finish in the Blue Grass. With the win, Burnham Square has launched himself into the lead in the Kentucky Derby point standings, one point ahead of Sandman, eight points ahead of Journalism in third, and nine points ahead of Bob Baffert’s Rodriguez, in fourth. If all goes well with those athletes and their connections, those are chief among tough colts he will face.
No one at Keeneland was more surprised by the strong late-closing win than Burnham Square’s trainer Ian Wilkes. Wilkes noted that he had “trained him a little harder because I needed (Kentucky Derby) points.” Burnham Square came into the race with thirty points. Now Wilkes finds himself perched with his athlete atop the leaderboard, but he admitted to being flummoxed that his colt, who had turned in a middling-to-lackluster fourth-place run in the Fountain of Youth on March 1, was even standing in the Blue Grass winners’ circle.
Acknowledging the tight, tough field his athlete had just minutes before bested, the trainer said, “You’d probably have to pinch me, because if you’d asked me before the race, I wouldn’t have dreamed I’d be right here with him.”
East Avenue’s trainer, Brendan Walsh, came away from the race quite grateful for the gritty place showing. The trainer said, “He looked at the head of the straight like he was going to fold, but he didn’t, he battled. I loved what I saw today.” With sixty points in 14th place in the Derby standings, East Avenue seems well above this year’s cut, but his connections are still mulling an appearance in the May 3 Churchill gate.
