Amazing Audrey one to beat on turf in first start off the claim

MIAMI – Two of the fillies and mares entered in Saturday’s $46,000 optional-claiming feature at Gulfstream Park West are stakes winner and two others have stakes experience. Amazing Audrey is not one of those. But the well-traveled filly is still the one to beat if the main event goes as scheduled at one mile on turf.

Amazing Audrey has earned $136,708 this season, more money than nearly the rest of the field combined. She has done so from just six starts, having registered three victories and three seconds. Her wins have come at three different venues, Saratoga on Aug. 15, Churchill Downs on May 1, and across town at Gulfstream Park against $50,000 starter-allowance competition on March 1.

Amazing Audrey, a 4-year-old daughter of Bodemeister, was claimed out of her last start for $25,000 at Saratoga by trainer Bobby Dibona in the interests of Love Unlimited Thoroughbreds LLC.

“You can see from her form she’s a pretty solid filly who shows up all the time,” said Dibona. “And while she’s already won a first-level allowance race, I knew I could run her in that condition for the tag for a pretty good purse down here. She’s not a big, strapping filly by any means, but she looks like a horse with a big heart who lays it all on the line every start.

“I thought she should be a useful horse around these parts, and this looks like a pretty good spot to start her out on Saturday.”

Midnight Soiree and Picara each is in search of her first win since posting a stakes victory in 2018.

Midnight Soiree captured the Martha Washington Stakes at Gulfstream in July 2018. She has gone winless in seven subsequent starts, although she was stakes-placed twice during that period. Trainer Lisa Lewis removed the blinkers for Midnight Soiree’s last outing, a fifth-place finish in the In The Breeze Stakes on Sept. 7, but will put them back on the 4-year-old filly Saturday.

Picara went wire to wire to register a 1 3/4-length decision in the Sunshine Millions Turf Preview here last November in her 2018 finale. She has started just four times since and exits an eighth-place effort while finishing well behind Midnight Soiree when the pair met under allowance conditions at Gulfstream in mid-August.

Beautiful Ballad, the lone 3-year-old in the field, finished 11th in the Grade 2 Appalachian over soft ground this spring at Keeneland. She has run but twice since and only once against older horses.

◗ Delta Bluesman, winner of the Grade 2 Smile Sprint at Gulfstream during the summer of 2016, is among the nine Florida-breds who will contest Saturday’s co-featured eighth race, a $39,000 optional claimer to be run at seven furlongs on the main track.

Delta Bluesman, now 9, was re-claimed on Aug. 29 for $6,250 by trainer Jorge Navarro and Monster Racing Stables, the same team for whom he won the Smile and later that season competed in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. Delta Bluesman’s last victory came 11 months ago at Gulfstream Park West when he won an optional-claiming race for a $25,000 price tag.

Delta Bluesman may have to catch Northern, who was re-claimed for $6,250 by one of his many former trainers, Aubrey Maragh, out of arguably his best performance yet, a wire-to-wire 7 1/4-length triumph on opening day of the current session for which he earned a career best 90 Beyer Speed Figure. Northern has won seven races in 2019, more than the rest of this field combined.