Trainer Gary Capuano will send out his first juvenile runners of 2025 at Laurel Park in maiden special weights on Friday and Saturday. After an astounding campaign in the local 2-year-old division last year, Capuano is grappling with high expectations and is doing his best to manage them. “Last year was crazy,” Capuano said. “Everything really fell into place. I told my help and my owners, I said, ‘Don’t expect that to happen again this year.’ That was just one of those years. Every 2-year-old I ran, except for one, won, and a lot of them kept going.” Of the nine juveniles Capuano entered last year, eight of them won their maidens and six of them went on to compete in stakes company. It’s Hammertime, a colt, won a statebred stakes at Delaware Park before taking the $125,000 Rocky Run there in October. In November, Sacred Thunder, another colt, won the $100,000 James F. Lewis at Laurel. This year, the trainer is starting earlier than he typically does and coming on stronger. He is debuting nearly half the amount of juveniles he did last year in the span of two days. Laurel offered its first race for 2-year-olds in early May, the final week before racing returned to Pimlico Race Course. Turning back to Laurel, the juvenile schedule will resume with a pair of $47,000 maiden special weights run at 4 1/2 furlongs on dirt. :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. The Friday race features a field of seven fillies, while the race Saturday will feature six male runners. Capuano has two horses entered in each race. Doc’s Miracle and Just Philtored are entered Friday; Let’s Go Lando and Worker Bee are entered Saturday. “You never know until they start running, but they all look pretty decent right now,” Capuano said. “Biggest thing is getting out of the gate good. A couple of them are a little nervous, so we’ll see how that goes.” Capuano will see several familiar faces in Laurel’s juvenile division early this season. John Robb, who won the first 2-year-old race in Maryland earlier this month with the precocious colt Romeo, has a horse in each race this week as well. Brittany Russell, who seems to have a hand in every Maryland division, will make her first juvenile start of the year if Whatarewedoing runs on Friday. The only person coming close to Capuano’s volume early on is Jose Corrales, who has two fillies running on Friday and a gelding entered Saturday. “You work with the horses the same way you work with your own kids,” Corrales said. “You let them play while they can play until they’re ready to go.” :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.