Choose Joy back on favorite course in turf sprint

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – For three months, during the summer and fall of 2021, Choose Joy was the undisputed queen of the local filly and mare turf sprint division, winning three straight overnight handicaps going five furlongs, two of them on the grass. The question facing handicappers now is whether Choose Joy is ready to regain her throne following a prolonged layoff and with two races under her belt in a $60,000 overnight handicap for fillies and mares carded at five furlongs on the grass.

Obviously, racing secretary Mike Costanzo thinks Choose Joy is capable of doing just that, having assigned the 6-year-old high weight of 123 pounds for the third start of her form cycle. That’s a pound more than the speedy stakes winner Boo Boo Kitty will carry and a concession of as many as six pounds to the remainder of the 10-horse lineup. The field includes the improving Jumeirah and stakes-placed Lady Radler, the lone 3-year-old in the lineup.

Choose Joy won 5 of 8 starts during her outstanding 2021 campaign and was worse than second but once that season. Four of those victories came in overnight handicap races and one in an allowance. She has never finished worse than second in seven starts over the local turf course and also captured her only start over the synthetic Tapeta track, although she never made it back to the winner’s circle that day. Miguel Vasquez pulled her up after the race with what was later diagnosed as a soft-tissue injury that kept her sidelined for the next 17 months.

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“She’s obviously been very special to me,” owner-trainer Steven Dwoskin said when the extent of her injury was revealed. “She was like having an ATM machine in the barn the way she had been performing prior to her injury.”

Choose Joy returned March 2 looking like her old self, finishing second, beaten a neck, under high-priced optional-claiming and allowance conditions on the turf. Four weeks later, however, she tired to finish a distant fifth sprinting on the main track.

“She’s doing very good,” Dwoskin said. “We look for her to run well. There won’t be turf racing in the summer, so I tried her back on dirt as an experiment. When she was young, she won a race on the dirt in a pretty good time. I said, ‘Let me try, and I’ll have a place to run her if she likes the dirt.’ But the jockey said she was a completely different horse on the dirt. She trains well on the dirt, but we don’t ask for a lot in the morning like we do in the afternoon.”

Boo Boo Kitty has won three of her last four starts, each coming over the synthetic track at Presque Isle Downs. She figures to be a big question mark for bettors, having been idle since October and making her first start on turf. Trained by Kevin Rice, Boo Boo Kitty shows only three works for her return, the last a half-mile in 49.20 seconds from the gate at Tampa Bay Downs.

A front-runner, Boo Boo Kitty also figures to have plenty of company on the front end with Fulminate, Get the Candy and Lady Radler in the lineup.

A competitive pace could aid the cause of Jumeirah, who exits a fifth-place finish in the Captiva Island Stakes over this course March 11. She received a career-best 80 Beyer Speed Figure.

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