Dollase active at all levels on Sunday card

DEL MAR, Calif. – Craig Dollase has had two starters through the first seven days of the meet at Del Mar, but things will heat up in a hurry for the trainer on Sunday, when he sends out four runners, including Brandothebartender in the featured $100,000 Cary Grant Stakes for older California-bred sprinters.

Brandothebartender was claimed for $40,000 in August, and already the partnership that owns him is in the black, courtesy of a victory in the California Flag on the downhill turf course at Santa Anita last month.

Preceding the Cary Grant, Dollase will run three horses – a low-level claimer, a first-time-starting 2-year-old, and a comebacking allowance runner – illustrative of the variety of stock in his relatively small barn.

Generous Pour, an $8,000 mare who goes in race 2, is trying to find her best form in what will be her third start following a lengthy layoff.

Luke’s On Fire, idle since April, returns in race 5, a five-furlong turf sprint. He won on the downhill course at Santa Anita earlier this year.

“Did a little surgery on him, gave him some time off. Looks like he fits in this first-condition Cal-bred,” Dollase said Friday of the comeback spot for Luke’s On Fire. “It seems like a nice spot for his first start back.”

It is the maiden Scouted who perhaps has the most upside of Dollase’s runners Sunday. A ridgling by Twirling Candy, Scouted was purchased for $100,000 at Barretts in April. He has been working at Santa Anita and makes his first start in race 3.

“He’s trained well,” Dollase said. “He’s not a big, heavy horse. He’s handy. He should give a good account of himself.”

O’Neill maidens look promising

Trainer Doug O’Neill will try to spoil Scouted’s debut with his own first-time starter in race 3, the Ghostzapper colt Feldspar, a $180,000 yearling purchase who landed the outside post in the field of six going 5 1/2 furlongs.

“He’s got some ability,” O’Neill said Friday morning at Del Mar. “He’s a good-looking son of Ghostzapper. I’m optimistic. He’s got a good post.”

Scouted debuts with Mario Gutierrez, who has worked him at Santa Anita.

O’Neill is hoping for an improved effort in race 7 from Macwinnon, a 2-year-old who has been idle since his debut in June at Los Alamitos. Since then, he has been gelded. His lone start was in a dirt sprint. He returns in a turf route.

“Brother Dennis,” O’Neill said, referring to his brother, who is a bloodstock agent, “said, ‘Don’t give up on him till you try the grass.’ ”

Macwinnon, a son of the Malibu Moon stallion Prospective, was held in such high regard earlier this year that he was purchased at auction for $140,000 – nearly 50 times Prospective’s $3,000 stud fee – and was named in honor of co-owner Erik Johnson’s teammate on the Colorado Avalanche, center Nathan MacKinnon.

“That tells you what we thought of him, to name the horse after him,” O’Neill said. “We’re still optimistic.”

The favorite in race 7 figures to be the Richard Mandella-trained Omaha Beach, a son of War Front who was third and then second when favored in two maiden grass races in September.

“Hoping he keeps going forward,” Mandella said. “I think he’s a good colt.”

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