Celtic Moonlight among impressive 2-year-olds at summer meet
While Gulfstream Park’s fans and horsemen wait for the next group of stakes, life goes on with a big under-the-radar performance every once in a while at the south Florida track.
More races for 2-year-olds are being run as the year unfolds and more of those young horses become available. One of the noteworthy performances came last Sunday from Celtic Moonlight in a maiden win.
Based at Palm Meadows with trainer Michelle Nihei, Celtic Moonlight earned a 66 Beyer Speed Figure with an eight-length score. The Florida-bred daughter of City Place is owned by her breeders, Irish Eyes Stable.
“I felt she would be precocious,” Nihei told Gulfstream publicity afterward. “She does everything right. She’s very athletic.”
The biggest Beyer of last week came from Hy Riverside, whose trainer, Antonio Sano, has gone on a recent tear to take the lead atop the Gulfstream standings midway through a three-month summer meet that ends Oct. 1. Hy Riverside, owned by Mar Racing Stable, roared from behind in the second race last Saturday to earn an 89 Beyer in the seven-furlong allowance.
Sano, of course, had an unforgettable weekend, winning the Saratoga Special on Sunday with Gunnevera. Sano, 53, told Gulfstream publicity this week that “it was the best experience I’ve had since I came to the United States” from Venezuela in 2009.
Sano, with his sizable stable split between Gulfstream and Gulfstream West (formerly Calder), said Gunnevera has remained at Saratoga and likely will run back Sept. 5 in the Grade 1 Hopeful, although he mentioned the Sept. 17 Iroquois at Churchill Downs and the Oct. 8 Champagne at Belmont as other races in mind.
Meanwhile, the next stakes day at Gulfstream is Sept. 3, when the second of three legs in the Florida Sire Stakes series will be held. The latest major stakes day was Aug. 6, when the first leg of the Sire Stakes series was run.
For this Saturday, just one allowance is part of a 12-race card that begins at 12:35 p.m. Eastern. It’s a $37,000, first-level race that drew a field of just five Florida-breds, and because of its small field, it’s carded early in the day as race 4.
The four-day race week began Thursday at Gulfstream with a carryover of $41,023 in the 20-cent Rainbow 6. The Rainbow 6 sequence Saturday is on races 7-12.