DeVaux taking the long view with So Sandy in allowance
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Trainer Cherie DeVaux was pleased with So Sandy’s training into a comeback race after a long layoff, pleased with the result, and pleased with the way So Sandy came out of his win July 18 at Ellis Park. But that does not mean DeVaux was in any hurry to run the horse back.
With no obvious race for So Sandy at Saratoga, DeVaux declined to go hunting for a spot somewhere else. Instead, she left So Sandy at Keeneland, where he had been breezing since April, and took the long view, and when So Sandy swings back into action in the featured seventh race Thursday at Churchill, the hope is this allowance race will springboard the colt back into fall stakes competition.
So Sandy is one of nine entered in a third-level allowance carded for 1 1/16 miles on dirt and open to $100,000 claimers, of which there is one, Woodcourt. Jose Ortiz rides and the morning line pegs So Sandy the 9-5 favorite.
Second by a head in the restricted Curlin last summer and a moderately competitive fourth in the Pennsylvania Derby, So Sandy already has the makings of a stakes horse, though not an elite one. But DeVaux hopes that by targeting a fall and winter stakes campaign – the Fayette at Keeneleland would be the play if So Sanday runs to expectations Thursday – So Sandy will step up in class just as the divisional elite are winding down their 2026 campaigns.
So Sandy won his allowance comeback at Ellis by just a head, but defeated a far more seasoned foe in Classic Car Wash while racing over a 1 1/2-turn mile that probably falls short of his ideal trip.
“It was just his first race off a layoff,” DeVaux said. “I like him – he’s a really nice colt.”
So Sandy has a better combination of established form and room for growth than any of his Thursday rivals, but he also probably goes off an overbet favorite. The DeVaux-Ortiz combination does value-seekers no favors, and So Sandy faces competition a full notch better than what he beat at Ellis – as one would anticipate with a horse climbing the class ladder.
The leading competition includes Gould’s Gold, who should have cleared this allowance condition by now, but makes his first start since being gelded; Publisher, America’s most famous maiden after a dozen starts but then a winner of three straight whose last-out turf experiment is easily forgivable; No Bien Ni Mal, who would be an overlay at his 6-1 morning-line odds while dropping from stakes and cutting back from dirt-marathon trips; and Malarchuk, who has raced only three times since being purchased as a 5-year-old last summer for $525,000.
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