Chu and You eyes Seattle Handicap

AUBURN, Wash. – Eight horses were nominated for Sunday’s $50,000 Seattle Handicap at Emerald Downs, the meeting’s first stakes for 3-year-old fillies, with the speedy Chu and You topping the list of leading contenders.

Chu and You swept the 2-year-old filly stakes series at Emerald last year, capturing each of the three races in gate-to-wire fashion en route to $87,844 in earnings. But she has lost her past two starts, including a sixth in the Rose McLeod Stakes at Hastings in her most recent outing May 3.

Others nominated to the Seattle include Strawberry Dawn, romping winner of a first-level allowance in her first start of the year; Lotta Attitude, who is 2 for 2 at the meeting; recent maiden winner Just a Love; Belladiva, Mylast Sweet Pea, and Sunpenny. The eighth nominee is City by the Bay, who is based at Golden Gate with trainer Bill Morey and is not expected to compete.

◗ Trainer Frank Lucarelli said this week that Gallant Son, the champion 2-year-old at Emerald Downs in 2008, has been returned to training in California and will start three more times before Lucarelli and owner Chris Randall usher the 8-year-old into retirement this fall.

Lucarelli said his first race back could come Aug. 9 in the $50,000 Jess Jackson, a five-furlong turf race at Santa Rosa.

“Gallant’s been on the jogger since May 1,” Lucarelli said. “He’s at Ed Moger’s farm right now in Galt, California, which is about an hour and 20 minutes from Golden Gate Fields. Ed gets him pretty darn fit out there.”

Gallant Son has captured 10 of 38 starts with earnings of $520,078. A versatile horse by Malabar Gold, he has won stakes races at four tracks – Emerald, Santa Anita, Hollywood Park, and Golden Gate – while doing most of his best work on grass. In his most recent start, which came in late December, Gallant Son finished third in the Grade 3 Daytona Stakes on the hillside turf course at Santa Anita.

“He ran third, but he grabbed a quarter,” Lucarelli said. “I gave him a couple of weeks, but he wasn’t as happy as he had been, so we kicked him out and freshened him up. He’ll run huge three times in a row, and then he kind of tails off. So we’re going to run him in August, and then twice in the fall, and then retire him. He’ll be 9 next year. He’s been good to us.”