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Schooling continues for Quality Road

Fri 20th, November 2009

Ozone Park, NY (Sports Network) - Quality Road, winner of this year's Florida Derby, will be back in the classroom Saturday at Aqueduct Racetrack. The three-year-old colt has another session of school scheduled with the starting gate.

"We'll try to simulate a race scenario a little bit, and see if we can load him without incident," said trainer Todd Pletcher.

Quality Road had to be scratched from the Breeders' Cup Classic at Santa Anita on November 7 after first refusing to be loaded into the starting gate and then violently reacting once he was loaded.

The colt had a lesson Wednesday morning at Belmont Park with former NYRA starter Bob Duncan. Saturday morning Quality Road will go through the paddock and load into the gate with jockey John Velazquez in the saddle. Pletcher and owner Edward Evans are considering entering the colt in the $300,000 Cigar Mile on Saturday, November 28.

"He'll breeze on Sunday, we'll see how that goes, and get with Mr. Evans and come up with a plan," added Pletcher. "I think he's handled everything since he's shipped in. He's done as well as you can hope for, but obviously this wouldn't be the way you would draw it up. He's been schooling perfect. The whole gate crew has gone out of their way, which we appreciate."

Quality Road was vanned from California to New York with a stop over at Churchill Downs. He refused to be loaded on to the airplane in California and the decision was made to van the colt back to New York by way of Kentucky.