Aqueduct: Top Flight familiar setting for Summer Applause
[bc_video_id:317428:]OZONE PARK, N.Y. – When Summer Applause won last year’s Top Flight Handicap at Aqueduct, she was making her first start for trainer Chad Brown.
Saturday, when Summer Applause seeks a repeat in the Grade 2, $200,000 Top Flight, the Brown-trained 5-year-old mare will looking to make the same auspicious first impression for new owners, the Narola Stable of Dr. Christoph Berglar.
Berglar, who operates Stonereath Stud in Kentucky, purchased Summer Applause for $1.3 million at the Fasig-Tipton sale last November, a few days after Summer Applause finished fourth to Groupie Doll in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint.
She was given back to Brown, who was originally given the filly last January by her previous owners, who had moved Summer Applause from Bret Calhoun following a last-place finish in the Sam Houston Ladies Classic.
For Brown, Summer Applause won the Top Flight, Allaire DuPont Distaff, and Lady’s Secret while finishing second in the Grade 1 Spinster. Brown opted for the Filly and Mare Sprint so as not to face the likes of Beholder, Princess of Sylmar, and Royal Delta in the Distaff.
“We wanted to participate in the Breeders Cup and we thought her best chance to be competitive was in the seven-eighths race and she ran a terrific race to pick up a piece,” Brown said. “Lucky for us, the Berglar family bought her, elected to keep her in training – at least for now – and this looked like the logical place to start her back in a race she won last year.”
Brown has been pleased with how Summer Applause has trained at Palm Meadows and thinks she is fit enough to run 1 1/16 miles off the layoff.
Summer Applause will have to catch Teen Pauline, who has had things her own way winning the Affectionately and Ladies Handicap in front-running fashion over the inner track.
Though Teen Pauline set a track record sprinting when in the barn of Steve Asmussen, trainer Todd Pletcher said the filly had shown him signs of being a two-turn horse last summer. However, she had trained and run well enough on the turf that he kept her on that surface until last fall when she ran third in the Comely at 1 1/8 miles. Under Irad Ortiz Jr., Teen Pauline will likely to try the same front-running tactics that worked in her last two starts.
“We’re not going to look to take her out of her element,” said Pletcher, who also will send out the late-running Royal Lahaina. “If somebody would go and set real fast fractions then I suppose we could sit, but they’re going to have to run fast to get in front of her.”
Flores Island seems possible of being forwardly placed. She makes her stakes debut after winning her last three races for trainer Bill Mott.
Centring, in what could be the final start of her career before she is bred, is in search of her first stakes victory after finishing second or third in seven of her last eight stakes tries.
Flash Forward, second to Teen Pauline in the Ladies, completes the field.