Broad Try primed for the upset

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - The longshot filly Broad Try cannot win the sixth race Thursday at Hollywood Park unless she improves significantly off her comeback.

Count on it.

Seven fillies and mares entered the first-level main-track optional claiming race at 1 1/16 miles, and Broad Try is spotted for an upset under jockey Richard Migliore.

"She won on grass, but she works so well on" the main track, Migliore said, adding "she gets over it real well."

Broad Try is trained by Richard Matlow, whose Hollywood Park base of operations is where Broad Try has posted all her workouts since she re-entered training this winter.

A 4-year-old, Broad Try needed six starts before winning a maiden race in winter 2007; two starts later she defeated starter-allowance foes on grass and then was sidelined nearly a year. She returned March 16 at Santa Anita in one of the toughest first-level turf allowances of the winter. At odds of 18-1, Broad Try ran surprisingly well.

Parked wide from post 9, she made a looping move into the stretch, rallied to within five lengths of the lead at the eighth pole, and then lost her punch, finishing 10th. While the 1-2-3 finishers from that race returned to win, Broad Try returned to Hollywood to gear up for her second start back. Migliore worked Broad Try a sharp five furlongs April 5; she came back April 12 with a sharp six-furlong move in 1:11.80.

George Todaro owns Broad Try, whose late-maturing pedigree (by Include, out of a Skip Trial mare) suggests the best is yet to come. Win or lose, Broad Try is sure to improve Thursday, and she will need to in order to win. That is because likely favorite G.I. Betty has higher speed figures, established form at the class level, and she benefits from a solid runner-up comeback.

G.I. Betty, owned and trained by Bruce Headley, missed by three-quarters behind a loose-on-the-lead front-runner March 9. It was her first start in four months. G.I. Betty has won 2 of 10 and has a new rider Thursday in David Flores.

Other leading contenders Thursday include Forest Miss, a 3-for-15 filly entered for the $40,000 claiming price; and Chelcee's Hope, first off the claim by Santa Anita leading trainer Mike Mitchell.

The others are Cajun Monarch, up in class from a $20,000 claiming-race win; Karlee's Kitten, a 5-for-21 mare who ran the best race of her career last summer on the Hollywood Cushion Track; and Marvelous Marcia.