Dulce Dreams can give Gonzales family second seven-figure win in a week
The 2-year-olds Fall Classic and Dulce Dreams won 300-yard Quarter Horses maiden races less than two hours apart on March 22 at Remington Park.
Fall Classic has now won three races, including the $1.1 million Heritage Place Futurity on May 30 at Remington Park.
Dulce Dreams can win her third race in Sunday’s $1 million Ruidoso Futurity at the Downs at Albuquerque. Both Fall Classic and Dulce Dreams are trained by James Gonzales III. His father, also James Gonzales, is banking on Dulce Dreams providing a second seven-figure win for their shared stable in as many weekends.
“I think it’s very possible,” the elder Gonzales said Thursday.
Dulce Dreams will be ridden by Christian Cardenas, who was aboard Fall Classic in the Heritage Place Futurity.
Dulce Dreams, owned by Efrain Zubia of Midland, Texas, is one of seven trial race winners from May 22 and 23 to advance to the final. The runners with the five fastest times each day earned berths in the final.
Dulce Dreams won her time trial by a neck, finishing 350 yards in 17.19 seconds. She had the fifth and final qualifying time on May 23 and will benefit from the race, the elder James Gonzales said.
“She’s a lot more fit,” he said. “If my filly steps away [from the gate] and runs her race, I think she’s the one to beat.”
Trial race winners Ask Her to Fly and Tell a Scout will attract support with both having won their last two starts.
Ask Her to Fly, the only filly in the field aside from Dulce Dreams, won a 300-yard maiden race on April 26 at Remington Park and a division of the Ruidoso Futurity trials in 17.12 on May 22. Jason Olmstead trains Ask Her to Fly.
Tell a Scout, trained by Trey Wood, won a 300-yard maiden race on April 4 at Sunland Park and a division of the Ruidoso Futurity trials in 17.35 on May 22.
Of the 10 finalists in the Ruidoso Futurity, nine are starting in their first stakes final. Nine Degrees, a trial race winner in 16.96 on May 23, finished last of nine in the $353,927 West Texas Futurity on April 4 at Sunland Park. Nine Degrees was trained at the time by Eric Valenzuela, who has since been summarily suspended by Albuquerque stewards after investigators searched his stable May 24 and found a needle and a syringe, according to a recent ruling.
Nine Degrees has been transferred to Omar Vargas.
This is the first year the Ruidoso Futurity will be held in Albuquerque. The race is being run at Albuquerque after the entirety of the Ruidoso Downs meeting was moved to the northern New Mexico track earlier this year.
In July of the last two years, Ruidoso Downs, located in the southern part of the state, has been flooded by runoff from nearby mountains that sustained widespread loss of vegetation in a massive forest fire in June 2024. It is not clear when racing will resume at Ruidoso Downs.
The latter weeks of the 2024 and 2025 Ruidoso Downs meetings were held at Albuquerque, including the famous All American Futurity on Labor Day.
:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.