Club Car fresh, ready to roll in Correction
RACE REPLAY IS NOT AVAILABLE
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – As well as Club Car has run throughout her career, she has only one stakes victory on her résumé. Saturday, Club Car looks well spotted to add to that total when she takes on five rivals in the $100,000 Correction Stakes at Aqueduct.
Club Car, a 6-year-old daughter of Malibu Moon, won the West Virginia Secretary of State Stakes last August at Mountaineer. In two subsequent stakes starts, she finished second behind Bell’s the One, the Grade 1-winning, $1.5 million earning mare. There is no one of that ilk in Saturday’s Correction, a six-furlong race for older female dirt sprinters.
While Club Car hasn’t raced since Nov. 13, trainer Ben Colebrook said the mare stayed with him all winter at Keeneland. Club Car received a little freshening before returning to the work tab in mid-January.
“I haven’t seen any change in her, her weight’s good, she’s a very straightforward filly to train,” Colebrook said. “Everything’s been going to plan.”
Though Club Car was entered in a stakes at Parx on Monday, Colebrook said the Correction was always the plan. He just needed assurances the race would go.
Club Car has made her last two starts in blinkers, equipment she will wear again on Saturday. Colebrook said he decided to try blinkers after Club Car’s runner-up finish in the Grade 3 Chicago Stakes at Arlington Park in June. He said he didn’t put them on for the West Virginia stakes race in August because she was such a heavy favorite that he didn’t think that was the time to experiment.
That Club Car came within a neck of Bell’s the One in the Grade 2 Thoroughbred Club of America Stakes convinced him the blinkers helped.
“If there’s not enough pace and she hits the front too soon, she’d idle a bit,” Colebrook said. “With the blinkers, she’s more focused and I’m not worried about waiting on horses.”
Club Car, a half-sister to Grade 2 Prioress Stakes winner Cilla, is 3 for 4 over a wet track, conditions that could be in play Saturday.
Dylan Davis rides Club Car from post 3.
Kept Waiting has gone 2 for 2 on dirt as part of a three-race winning streak she brings into the Correction. Kept Waiting is coming off a 5 1/2-length victory in the Broadway Stakes, a New York-bred race run over a sloppy track here on Feb. 13.
“I don’t know if she moves up on it, but she definitely handles it,” said Robert Falcone Jr., the trainer of Kept Waiting.
This will be Kept Waiting’s third race in five weeks.
“The original plan was to wait until the Distaff,” said Falcone, referring to the Grade 3, $150,000 stakes here on April 9, “but she was doing so good, it’s going to be tough to keep her on the ground for another four weeks.”
Kendrick Carmouche rides Kept Waiting from post 6.
Dontletsweetfoolya ships up from Maryland for Lacey Gaudet and could play out as the primary speed under Jorge Vargas Jr.
Easy to Bless, who romped in the slop two starts back, Letmetakethiscall, and Prodigy Doll complete the field.