Dance With Fate: Have Polytrack, won't travel

DEL MAR, Calif. – Dance With Fate would easily fit in the rich stakes for 3-year-olds in New Jersey, New York, or West Virginia over the next two weekends. He would be well suited to run in the $150,000 La Jolla Handicap for 3-year-olds on turf at Del Mar on Aug. 9.

Dance With Fate will miss those races. Instead, trainer Peter Eurton and the partnership that owns the colt will mix one of Dance With Fate’s greatest assets with something new. Dance With Fate will face older horses for the first time in Saturday’s $200,000 San Diego Handicap at Del Mar, racing over a Polytrack synthetic surface he has shown that he adores.

Best known for winning the Grade 1 Blue Grass Stakes on the Keeneland Polytrack in April, Dance With Face clinched his participation in the Grade 2 San Diego by zooming five furlongs in 58.40 seconds at Del Mar last Saturday morning, the fastest of 90 works at the distance.

That helped Eurton make up his mind where to run him.

“It’s a pretty good incentive to run Saturday, the fact that he is so good on it and trains so well on it,” he said of the surface.

Plus, the race is at home. Dance With Fate was a frequent traveler through the spring and early summer, with mixed results. Staying home has more appeal than the complicated travel of getting out of greater San Diego to points east.

“Do you know how hard it is to get to West Virginia?” Eurton said last weekend. “You van to Ontario (airport), fly to Cincinnati, and then it’s a 10-hour van ride.”

A trip to Kentucky in April proved easier. Eurton talked of a start in the Blue Grass Stakes for more than two months and watched Dance With Fate win the biggest race of his career.

“It was nice to plan something out and achieve that,” he said. “We established a value for him as a stallion.”

The Blue Grass led to a start in the Kentucky Derby on May 3. Dance With Fate raced in traffic and finished sixth of 19, 6 1/4 lengths behind the winner, California Chrome.

“If he didn’t have a bad trip, he could have picked up a check,” Eurton said. “He got pinched back on the first turn. He hung a bit in the last sixteenth.”

Eurton brought Dance With Fate back to California and pointed for the Belmont Derby in New York on July 5. The preceding day, Dance With Fate suffered a bout with colic two hours after a gallop.

“It was a six-hour ordeal,” Eurton said.

The illness was too close to the Belmont Derby to run him in the race.

“I think it might have taken too much out of him,” Eurton said.

A week later, a healthy Dance With Fate was back in California in full training. The workout last Saturday showed Eurton that Dance With Fate is ready for a race.

Dance With Fate, by Two Step Salsa, has won 3 of 9 starts and earned $680,050, all for Sharon Alesia, Bran Jam Stable, and Ciaglia Racing. Dance With Fate has earned $595,250 while racing on synthetic tracks. Last summer, he was second in the Grade 1 Del Mar Futurity on Polytrack.

Should Dance With Fate run well in the San Diego, he might start next start in the $1 million Pacific Classic over 1 1/4 miles here Aug. 24. There is an urgency for Dance With Fate to run in the big races here this meet. Del Mar will replace its synthetic surface after the autumn meeting with a dirt surface, and Dance With Fate is winless in three starts on dirt.