The Puma returns to Haskell Stakes after Derby setback

The Puma added a live, proven 3-year-old to Saturday’s $1 million NYRA Bets Haskell Stakes, and that changes the race before it even starts. Monmouth Park’s 59th running of the Haskell comes with a 14-race card, five additional stakes, and a Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series berth that sends the winner straight into the Longines Breeders’ Cup Classic at Keeneland on Oct. 30-31.

The colt’s return matters because the spring never gave him a fair chance to settle into the division’s pecking order. He was knocked off the Kentucky Derby trail just 12 hours before the gate when a leg infection surfaced, then came back with five or six breezes after the setback. Assistant trainer Gustavo Delgado Jr. said the final work showed the right signs, and the barn decided this was the right time to send him back against the best of his crop.

On paper, The Puma already has the kind of form that can change the shape of a race. The son of Essential Quality was unraced at 2, came off a $150,000 OBS April purchase, and won the Tampa Bay Derby to become the first graded stakes winner from his sire’s first crop. That victory earned 50 Kentucky Derby qualifying points and put him on the radar as one of the more interesting late-developing colts in the class. He followed that with a nose loss in the Florida Derby to Commandment, a result that left him with graded success and unfinished business on the same résumé.

Luis Saez takes the mount for the Haskell after Javier Castellano was sidelined by a spill at Saratoga Race Course on July 3 and expected to miss about three weeks. That is not a small switch for a horse trying to reenter a high-stakes race after a forced layoff. The Puma had been set up with Castellano at Gulfstream Park early in his career, but Saez now gets the assignment on a horse owned by OGMA Investments, JR Ranch, and High Step Racing.

The Haskell has often been a proving ground for horses headed to bigger things. Bayern, American Pharoah, and Authentic all used the race as a springboard to Breeders’ Cup Classic wins in the same 3-year-old season, while White Abarrio ran in the 2022 Haskell before later winning the Classic at 4. Monmouth has long sold Haskell Day as the shore’s biggest party and the season’s premier race, but for The Puma it is also a clean read on where he stands after the Derby detour: still in the conversation, or still a step behind the leaders.