BY GULFSTREAM PARK PRESS OFFICE (Edited)
HALLANDALE BEACH, FL – Shadybrook Farm, Inc.’s 2025 Florida Sire Stakes-winner Fourth and Central is sitting on go as breeder, owner and trainer Michael Yates awaits another spot for the talented 3-year-old gelding.
Fourth and Central extended his win streak to three races in a first condition, $25,000 optional claiming for 3-year-olds and older sprinting five furlongs on the all-weather Tapeta course on September 20 at Gulfstream Park. The chestnut son of Stonehedge Farm South’s Cajun Breeze had his first subsequent timed work Thursday, going an easy half-mile in :50.25 over Gulfstream’s main track.
“We couldn’t be asking for things to be going any better,” Yates said. “He just seems to be getting better with each race. The biggest hurdle with him is trying to find places to run him moving forward. We’re just kind of sitting and waiting.”
His most recent win was Fourth and Central’s second try against his elders, the other coming June 21 in his first start since winning the Dr. Fager leg of the FTBOA Florida Sire Stakes last September. Fresh off the layoff, Fourth and Central set the pace before fading to sixth—only the second time in seven starts, five of them wins, that he finished off the board.
“When he came back off the layoff he had to run against older horses first time out and he wasn’t a hundred percent cranked. He wasn’t up to the task of the group that he had to run with,” Yates said. “The objective was to get [him] back to the races and get [him] racing so that we don’t have to keep breezing and breezing and breezing.
“The a-other-than allowance was against older horses and I felt like he was ready to lead over there. He got used pretty hard early and just tired the last part of it,” he added. “But it was a really fast race. They finished up in [1:09.92], so the task was a little much for him but he came out of the race good and he trained really well afterwards.”
Yates moved Fourth and Central to the grass for his next start and he hasn’t lost since. He captured his grass debut by three-and-three-quarters lengths in a 10-1 upset July 25, and his last two races have come on synthetic Tapeta—one by circumstance and the other by design – each by length-and-a-half.
“He’s out of a Munnings mare [Little Red Frog], so I thought the next logical spot was to try him five-eighths on the grass and he absolutely loved it,” Yates said. “We’ve run him on the Tapeta and he ran well. The first time he ran it, [the race] came off. We didn’t enter for it, and I felt like his second race on the Tapeta he improved by a lot. Just visually he ran the race much more professionally.”
Fourth and Central is five-for-seven lifetime, graduating at first asking last May and capturing the six-furlong Dr. Fager by a length-and-three-quarters in his third start beating subsequent stakes winner Trelawny and multiple stakes-placed Squire. Minor physical issues sidelined him for the rest of his juvenile campaign, and Yates didn’t breeze him again until late May.
“Many good 2-year-olds have a hard time keeping their form when they turn three, so it’s very gratifying when you get to see them do that,” Yates said. “When you do the right thing for the horse, they do the right thing for you.”
Return to the October 16 issue of Wire to Wire
