Belmont Park: Sky Blazer takes on elders on turf

ELMONT, N.Y. – Youth, not to mention talent, may be served in Wednesday’s feature race at Belmont Park as Sky Blazer, the only 3-year-old in the field, faces a group of seemingly ordinary older males in a $53,000, first-level allowance at 1 1/16 miles on the inner turf course.

There is a pick-six carryover of $43,718 entering Wednesday’s card, and five of the six races in the sequence are scheduled for the turf, though intermittent rain is forecast throughout the week.

Sky Blazer, trained by Barclay Tagg, is making his first start since winning a maiden race by a neck over Philly Ace on April 9. The third-place finisher from that race, Street Game, has come back to win twice at Belmont this spring.

Sky Blazer is out of the dam Highland Hope, who is a half-sister to a trio of graded stakes winners trained by Tagg in the early 1990s including Royal Mountain Inn (6 for 6 at Belmont), Highland Crystal, and Miss Josh.

Sky Blazer had a little traffic trouble in his debut, but split horses and came with a three-wide rally in his second start to gain his first victory. Alex Solis, aboard for that maiden win, has the return call Wednesday from post 6.

Darley Stable has the coupled entry of Capital Market and Liston in the field. Capital Market, whose lone win came over this course last September, just missed clearing this allowance condition by a head when he was outfinished by Hariolus on April 23 at Gulfstream. That race produced two next-out winners, including Chinglish, who won Saturday’s James Murphy Stakes at Pimlico.

“His last race, he ran well, we just got caught late; had a little traffic trouble in the stretch,” trainer Tom Albertrani said.

Liston, trained by Kiaran McLaughlin, has finished third twice in two turf starts.

Trainer Shug McGaughey, who is 5 for 9 at the meet, sends out Arnell, a half-brother to 2005 champion 2-year-old Stevie Wonderboy. After getting beat 53 lengths in three dirt tries, Arnell won a maiden race over yielding turf at Aqueduct on April 20.

“The horse had trained on the dirt like a horse with a lot of ability, but as you could see he never ran any good on it,” McGaughey said. “Even though he got beat quite a long way at Gulfstream, it was a bit of an improvement. Our last resort was to bring him up here and try him on the grass, see how he handles it. He ran good. I think he’s got ability, whether he steps it up or not I don’t know.”