Fly Friendly Sky tries turf in sprint allowance

It’s a 136-mile drive from the Evangeline Training Center, where trainer Steve Flint is based, to Fair Grounds, where Flint will start Fly Friendly Sky in the featured sixth race Thursday.

But that ship is a mere hop, skip, and jump compared with the travel required for Creaky Cricket to start. Creaky Cricket is based at Tampa Bay Downs, but he’s in luck: Trainer Mike Dini runs a horse-hauling business, and before dawn Wednesday, he was scheduled to load Creaky Cricket onto a van and drive the 636 miles to Fair Grounds himself.

Flint and Dini each have a second horse in the race, a turf sprint at about 5 1/2 furlongs for 3-year-olds that is open to first-level allowance horses or $50,000 claimers, but neither will run. Flint is pointing Salute the C to a Louisiana-bred stakes at Delta Downs next month. Gallery, a talented Louisiana-bred turf horse, is due to ship back to Fair Grounds for the Black Gold Stakes.

The forecast calls for clear weather Wednesday and Thursday, which means Flint and owner Carrol Castille of Whispering Oaks Farm should finally get to see what Fly Friendly Sky can do on grass. He was twice entered for turf at this meet but was rained onto sloppy tracks.

“Even his schooling race at the training center was in slop,” Flint said. “The horse is a mud magnet.”

KEY CONTENDERS

Fly Friendly Sky (Last 3 Beyers: 77-77-43)

◗ Flint is looking forward to trying Fly Friendly Sky, a son of Sky Mesa whose dam won a grass race, on turf. “He just seems like with his running style and the way he travels, he has the feel of a grass horse.”

◗ Connections thought highly of him at 2 and sent him to Steve Asmussen to debut at Churchill Downs last summer. “He was well meant as a young horse but just wasn’t mature enough,” Flint said.

◗ In good form at this meet. Won a maiden race over Visceral, a 3-year-old with ability who won a maiden race next out, and most recently was a close third behind Bourbon Cowboy, perhaps the most talented 3-year-old sprinter currently stabled at Fair Grounds.

Creaky Cricket (Last 3 Beyers: 73-55-45)

◗ Has made his last five starts at two turns, running competitively twice, including his most recent start, where he overcame early trouble to finish second in a Tampa Bay Downs turf mile and was elevated to first via disqualification. But Dini is making a distance change with a purpose. “He’s run well at a mile, but I think he’s more of a sprinter,” he said.

That idea might have merit. Creaky Cricket’s career debut was a short Arlington Polytrack sprint that he won in a blowout, and the 84 Beyer it produced is a career-best.