Despite loss, Mind Your Biscuits still on track for Dubai

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Would trainer Chad Summers have liked for Mind Your Biscuits to have won his 2018 debut? Undoubtedly yes. But was he hanging his head in total disappointment just minutes after the multiple Grade 1 winner had been outgamed to the finish line by a head by Conquest Windycity in Friday’s $53,000 allowance feature? Definitely not.

“I’m not really disappointed,” said Summers. “He wanted to run. He wanted to do something. He had four works, just one five-eighths, coming in today. Conquest Windycity had been running. They went an opening quarter in 23 and change then really picked it up from there, 1:08 and change and 1:21. We’re going to be real good coming out of this race and have bigger fish to fry overseas.”

Summers was referring to his main goal for Mind Your Biscuits, a defense of his title in the Dubai Golden Shaheen on March 31 – a race he won last year by three lengths after narrowly losing his prep four weeks earlier in the Gulfstream Park Sprint.

Summers said that Mind Your Biscuits could have one more start prior to the Golden Shaheen, and plans to nominate the horse to the Gulfstream Park Sprint on March 3.

“It is back a little quick, in three weeks,” Summers said. “If he’s ready, we’ll go. If not, we’ll just wait for Dubai. He’ll tell me.”

Trainer Mike Maker was quick to praise jockey Jose Ortiz for his ride aboard Conquest Windycity as perhaps the difference in the race.

“The plan was to go to the lead, and Jose executed it perfectly,” said Maker, who claimed Conquest Windycity in the name of owner David Staudacher for $62,500 last fall at Churchill Downs.

“I was originally thinking of going to Sam Houston with him,” Maker said, referring to the $100,000 Maxxam Gold Cup on Feb. 24. “But now I may have to rethink those plans after what happened today.”