Cosmic Gold may be headed to stakes ranks

It took a while to get Cosmic Gold’s career rolling, but the soon-to-be 4-year-old son of Mineshaft rattled off his third straight win at Laurel Park on Wednesday and appears headed to the stakes ranks.

Owned by Harry and Tom Meyerhoff and trained by Mike Trombetta, Cosmic Gold handily won his two-turn debut in the second-level optional claiming race and earned a 90 Beyer Speed Figure. He certainly could have gone faster down the lane if jockey Julian Pimentel had needed.

The win follows first-level allowance and maiden victories at a one-turn mile. He was given 87 Beyers in both of those races.

“Now that we’ve got him more ground, I like what I saw the other day,” Trombetta said. “His two wins at a mile were good, but they were around one turn and were just wins. The other day was his first two-turn race, and he did everything right. It was muddy. He sat and rated and then took off.”

Although Trombetta doesn’t have any concrete plans laid out for Cosmic Gold, he said the $100,000 Native Dancer going 1 1/16 miles Jan. 3 at Laurel Park is a possibility.

Cosmic Gold, a $120,000 Keeneland yearling buy, missed his 2-year-old season with “some little setbacks,” according to Trombetta. He finished third in his debut at Parx this June and was second and fourth at Saratoga before starting his Laurel win streak.

“He’s always been one of my favorites, and that’s why I took him to Saratoga – twice,” Trombetta said. “We had him up there as a 2-year-old too, but he had some baby issues. When we started him off, we had him in those sprints, but he doesn’t really have the turn of foot at those distances. He wants to go longer.”

Trombetta is having a typically strong Laurel meet, and as of Friday morning, he was fourth in the standings with 19 wins, four behind leader Claudio Gonzalez. Trombetta leads all trainers at the meet with purse earnings of $869,172 after having won both the Sprint and Lassie on Maryland Million Day.