Zoldan confirms Went the Day Well will be entered in Preakness Stakes

May 8, 2012 at 12:05a.m.

YOUNGSTOWN

The Kentucky Derby champion isn’t the only one who’ll have another.

Fresh off a fourth-place finish on Saturday at Churchill Downs, Went the Day Well will compete in the Preakness on May 19, Youngstown businessman Bruce Zoldan, the horse’s co-owner, said Monday.

“We plan on running him in the Preakness,” said Zoldan, “and we plan on winning the Preakness.”

Went the Day Well finished strong at the Derby, moving up from 18th to finish fourth behind I’ll Have Another, Bodemeister and Dullahan in the 20-horse field.

“Had that been another furlong or two, we might have had another winner,” said Zoldan, who, as a member of Team Valor International, co-owned last year’s Derby-winning horse, Animal Kingdom. “We felt good about the race, but we certainly didn’t get the perfect ride you need to win the Kentucky Derby. We got bumped at the gate, got checked a few times and had to go seven wide to get outside.

“With all that, to go from 18th to fourth, we finished ahead of some great horses.”

The horse has a “lima bean-sized nick” on its right front ankle, Zoldan said, “but other than that, it seems to be fine.” Unlike other horses in the Derby, Went the Day Well hadn’t run a big race in more than a month and Zoldan believes his horse will be fresher than the others at the Preakness.

“Three or four days before the Derby, if you listened to the analysts or the major handicappers, very few were mentioning Went the Day Well,” he said. “They were talking about Union Rags and Hansen and Gemologist and this one and that one.

“Now the horse has made an impression on the horse racing world.”

By finishing fourth, Went the Day Well earned automatic invitations to both the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes but Zoldan said the team is just focused on doing well in Baltimore — for now.

“Obviously, if we do well at the Preakness, we’ll talk about the next challenge,” he said. “We like to take it one race at a time.”