Dibona hopes his feel for surface switches pays off again
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After three instructive starts in trainer Bobby Dibona’s barn, Relampago Verde will finally return to the turf in a $58,000 allowance on Sunday at Gulfstream Park. The 5-year-old gelding won two races on the surface in Kentucky for Kenny McPeek last year, and Dibona said that he expects him to relish the grass in Florida.
“Looking forward to getting him on the grass,” Dibona said. “He looks like he’s going in the right direction now that I’ve had him a little bit.”
Relampago Verde’s last turf start was in February, when the gelding finished seventh by four lengths in the Grade 3 Fair Grounds Stakes in Louisiana. He made his last start for McPeek on dirt at Oaklawn in April before going to the Keeneland April horses of racing age sale, where owners Michael Iavarone and Sanford H. Robbins purchased him for $140,000.
Relampago Verde has not won in three starts for Dibona, finishing third in a pair of $70,000 handicaps on dirt and doing very little running on the Tapeta in the $75,000 Soldier’s Dancer. Dibona said that he considers his most recent performance, a three-quarter-length defeat in the Tackleberry Handicap, to have been an improved effort that should prepare him well for the turf mile on Sunday.
“Last race was pretty game,” Dibona said. “He got carried out a bit and maybe should have won the race. Just got beat by a couple of nice horses. We want to just get him on the turf.”
Dibona’s keen eye for surface switches is evidenced by another horse in the allowance field, as Steal Sunshine will make his second straight turf start after a game photo-finish loss in June. In his first race on grass since 2021, the 6-year-old finished just behind Beach Gold, next-out winner of the $249,375 Kentucky Downs Preview Mint Millions Turf Mile at Ellis Park.
“I was just prepping the horse,” Dibona said. “I wasn’t even all the way cranked up, but the fact that [Beach Gold] came back and beat that field certainly compliments Steal Sunshine.”
A graded stakes contender on dirt since 2022, Steal Sunshine allowed Dibona to take his first trip to the Middle East in April and finished fourth in the Group 2, $1 million Godolphin Mile. He also finished second in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Mile and sixth in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup Invitational this year, but Dibona decided to bring him back from the United Arab Emirates on turf and seems poised to reap the benefits.
Steal Sunshine is one of six stakes winners in the field of eight on Sunday. Relampago Verde is one of the two without such a victory and remains a strong contender, leaving no gaps in the thoroughly classy group.
Grand Mo the First, the 18th-place finisher in the 2024 Kentucky Derby, switched back to turf late in his 3-year-old campaign, winning the $85,000 Bear’s Den before finishing second by a neck in the Grade 3 Virginia Derby. He lost by the same margin in his 4-year-old debut for trainer Victor Barboza Jr. in May.
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