Charlie's Wish back sprinting in Game Face Stakes
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HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer David Fawkes hadn’t originally planned on taking Charlie’s Wish to Churchill Downs to run on Kentucky Derby weekend, and he certainly didn’t plan on running her two turns once she got there. But he was pleasantly surprised when his versatile 3-year-old filly finished a close and game second against a strong group of allowance rivals in a race contested just a half-hour or so after the Grade 1 Kentucky Oaks.
Charlie’s Wish has returned home to Gulfstream Park for her next start, which comes against seven rivals going 6 1/2 furlongs in Saturday’s main event, the $75,000 Game Face Stakes.
Fawkes was looking for something locally after Charlie’s Wish easily defeated a field of first-level statebred allowance foes going six furlongs on March 29 but ultimately was left with no alternative but to ship out of town after he was unable to get a race to fill for his filly. His decision was made easier by the fact he was already heading to Churchill Downs for the first weekend in May to run his veteran Florida-bred stakes winner Noble Drama on Derby Day in the Knicks Go Stakes.
“I wanted an allowance race for her but nothing was going here so it was easy to put her on the same van with Noble Drama and send her to Kentucky,” Fawkes said. “I originally intended to run her in the shorter division of the allowance race but when it looked like it was going to overfill, I didn’t want to take the chance of shipping her all the way out there and getting excluded, so I switched her to the longer division instead.”
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Fawkes admitted Charlie’s Wish, who went postward at 18-1 at Churchill, exceeded his expectations with her performance.
“I really hadn’t prepped her for that distance and she might have run out of training a little bit at the end, so she surely exceeded my expectations a little bit the way she ran,” Fawkes said. “I’m a little concerned of shortening her back to a sprint on Saturday, but she’s been training well since she got back, we’re just going to need a little help with the pace.”
The speed of the Game Face figures to come from rail-drawn Queen Karima, who posted a career-best 81 Beyer Speed Figure winning her maiden by 4 1/4 lengths in wire-to-wire fashion in her most recent start. That outing came on turf, as did her two previous starts, so she will be a bit of a question mark over the main track although Queen Karima did post a bullet half-mile work in 46.60 seconds on the dirt last week.
The Grade 2-placed Flakes also is sure to attract plenty of support as she too shortens up in distance off a series of longer races, including a third-place finish going 1 1/16 miles in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Oaks on April 1. Flakes has won twice and finished off the board just once in five starts, her only poor outing coming in the Grade 3 Forward Gal in just her second career start on Feb. 4.
◗ Choose Joy, who dominated the local filly and mare turf sprint division two years ago and regained that ranking after winning a $60,000 overnight handicap on May 20, will try to duplicate that performance when switching to Tapeta under similar conditions in Saturday’s supporting feature, the $60,000 Biscayne Park.
Choose Joy won her only previous start on Tapeta in October 2021 but went to the sidelines for 17 months after being diagnosed with a soft-tissue injury coming out of that race.
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