Despite maiden status, Gorillaz fits in Sapling
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The maiden Gorillaz seems uniquely prepared to make his stakes debut in the $100,000 Sapling on Saturday at Monmouth Park. Trainer Danny Gargan said the half-brother to Magnitude is more than ready to handle the two-turn mile.
“He’s training really good,” Gargan said. “He’s gonna go forward. He’s a two-turn horse and he’s Magnitude’s half-brother. If you ever saw him, you’d know he’s a two-turn horse.”
In his debut last month, the 2-year-old colt attempted 6 1/2 furlongs in a $115,000 maiden special weight at Saratoga. Gargan said he wasn’t committed to running in the race and didn’t need him to win, but in what turned out to be one of the toughest juvenile races at the meet, he managed to finish a distant fourth with a 73 Beyer Speed Figure.
The three horses who finished in front of Gorillaz that day, including the impressive winner Gaudreau and unlucky third-place finisher U. S. S. Valor, all earned speed figures that currently rank among the 10 highest for juveniles this year.
“I think the best 2-year-old that ran at Saratoga this summer was U. S. S. Valor, Shug McGaughey’s horse, who actually finished third in that race,” Gargan said. “I think he’s the best horse that ran all year up here and he’s still a maiden. So we’re coming out of a very key race.”
Because the mile distance on dirt at Monmouth is run around two turns, it presents trainers with an excellent opportunity to give their 2-year-olds an early distance test. Gargan always intended to give Gorillaz more ground and wanted him to be sharp in his first attempt.
“One of the owners [Belmar Racing] is from [the New Jersey area] and wants to win that race at some point,” Gargan said. “We had another colt that we were going to run and he got sick, so we opted for this colt. Once we ran fourth [at Saratoga], I figured that would be a good spot.”
Five horses in the field of nine juveniles have prior stakes experience, including Snowhomish, who was disqualified from a victory in the $75,000 Dover at Delaware Park last month. The Jorge Delgado-trained colt earned a 71 Beyer in his July debut, one of the few figures in the field that stacks up to Gorillaz’s last-out effort.
Rasasi, a 7 1/4-length maiden winner at Gulfstream Park in June, has since finished well back in the Grade 3 Sanford and Grade 2 Saratoga Special in New York. He will likely encounter an easier field around two turns on Saturday, as will Chasing the Son, who finished a distant fourth in the $250,000 Juvenile at Ellis Park last month for Rey Hernandez.
Hes Steelin Mylady, a Louisiana-bred trained by Aaron West, shipped to Evangeline Downs in August and finished third against statebred rivals in the $100,000 D.S. Shine Young Futurity. He will add blinkers in his first route attempt, and jockey Mitchell Murrill is scheduled to travel to New Jersey to ride him.
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