After a five-year layoff, Merango Tango makes comeback count

With marquee races such as the Sam F. Davis and Tampa Bay Derby straight ahead, there will be more good stories to come out of Tampa Bay Downs as the 2019-20 race meet continues to unfold.

But few will be able to top Merango Tango staying unbeaten by winning an $8,000 claiming race on Dec. 27 at the Oldsmar, Fla., track.

Incredibly, Merango Tango was returning from a layoff of more than five years when he sped 5 1/2 furlongs in 1:04.46. Now 9, he had raced only twice before, winning maiden and first-level allowance sprints at Remington Park under the since-retired Cliff Berry as a 3-year-old in the summer of 2014.

“It was a pretty neat thing,” owner-trainer Tim Padilla said recently by phone.

As a son of Lemon Drop Kid, Merango Tango was cut out to be a good one. Bred in Virginia by the estate of Edward Evans, he was gelded before his first start and quickly showed promise for Padilla and longtime client Alan Booge, who had bought him for $80,000 as a weanling of 2011.

After his two Remington wins, Merango Tango was plagued by various ailments in the months and years that followed. Booge died last July while Padilla was cranking the gelding back up – again – with a series of workouts at Canterbury Park. Padilla wound up buying him from Booge’s estate, and by the time he won at Tampa, he officially had worked a remarkable 30 times since his last start – nine times in 2016, once in 2017, seven times in 2018, and 13 times (starting in mid-June) in 2019.

“All those years, I’d never really given up on him,” Padilla said. “He kept on getting an abscess on his foot. I’d get him ready to go, and then it’d pop up again.”

When he was finally ready to run again late in his 8-year-old season at Tampa, Marengo Tango passed a battery of stringent health requirements, including approval from the starter and the track veterinarian.

“With all the trouble the industry has been having, you can imagine how closely they went over him,” Padilla said.

After winning for an $8,000 tag, Merango Tango is now eligible for starter conditions, and that’s the type of race in which Padilla hopes to run him next.

“I got the spot I wanted to bring him back in,” he said. “A starter makes sense, I guess.”

For Padilla, 53, the Merango Tango coup is part of a nice start to his winter at Tampa, where into this week he has 3 wins and 3 seconds from 13 starts. A native of Phoenix, Padilla won his first race in 1992 before embarking on a training career in earnest in 1995, maintaining a stable for years in the deep Southwest. In more recent times, he has used Remington and Canterbury as his main stops while replacing Oaklawn Park with Tampa starting in December 2014.

“It’s a very kind racetrack here at Tampa,” he said.

Padilla began 2020 with 553 career wins and nearly $6.7 million in stable earnings.

Six in Wednesday feature

The best of nine Wednesday races comes early in the day, with six 3-year-olds going a mile on the turf in race 2, a first-level allowance with a $22,500 purse. A couple of colts with Maryland connections, Bye Bye Melvin, trained by Graham Motion, and Muchmorethanthis, trained by Mike Trombetta, look like major contenders, along with Me and Mr. C for Ned Allard. First post is 12:25 p.m. Eastern.

There are no stakes again this coming weekend, but three will be run Jan. 18, ending a five-week span without stakes. Those races are the Pasco, Gasparilla, and Wayward Lass. The biggest dates at the meet are Feb. 7, when the Sam F. Davis will be run, and March 8, Tampa Bay Derby Day.

◗ Tampa is hosting a high-rollers handicapping contest for the second straight year, with two seats to the National Handicapping Championship in Las Vegas (2020 or 2021) at stake. The in-person contest is set for Saturday. Players are required to deposit $1,000, with half serving as a live bankroll and half going to the prize pool. Wagering is limited to five races, all of them at Tampa.