Forecast for rain dampens Breen's enthusiasm for running Firenze Fire in True North
ELMONT, N.Y. – When it comes to Firenze Fire defending his title in Friday’s $300,000 True North Stakes at Belmont Park, trainer Kelly Breen has only one concern – and it’s not the fact his horse drew the rail or that the competition includes the recent Grade 1 winner Flagstaff. What really worries Breen most is the weather.
Rain is forecast for the local area for much of the day Thursday and into Friday morning, and the prospect of a wet track for the Grade 2 True North could have Firenze Fire’s status in doubt right up to post time. The 6 1/2-furlong True North for older horses goes as the seventh event on an 11-race program.
:: Enhance your handicapping with DRF’s Belmont Park Clocker Report
Breen assumed training duties for Firenze Fire from the suspended Jason Servis a little more than a year ago. Since that time, Firenze Fire has won three graded stakes, all over fast tracks, including the 2020 True North by 1 1/2 lengths over Stan the Man. Yet he also finished a distant fourth in the Grade 1 Carter and last, beaten 13 1/4 lengths, in the Grade 1 Forego while under Breen’s watch, with both of those races decided in the slop.
“Since I’ve been around him, he doesn’t seem to like the mud,” Breen said. “I’m just going to watch the weather and hope we get a dry track. If it comes up wet, I’m not sure what we’ll do since there is really no other race to point for if we decided to skip running here.”
Firenze Fire, who is a winner of 6 of 9 starts at Belmont, will be ridden again Friday by Irad Ortiz Jr. He enters the True North off one of his best performances yet, a 3 1/4-length decision four weeks earlier in the Grade 3 Runhappy in his 2021 debut, for which he received a 103 Beyer Speed Figure.
“He’s doing as good as if not better than he was going into his last start, and it was nice to see him perform that well when racing without Lasix for the first time ever in the Runhappy, which is always a concern,” Breen said of the 6-year-old Firenze Fire. “There doesn’t seem to be any real clear-cut speed in this field. He may be a tick older and not quite as speedy as he once was, but he has it if he needs it. I’ll just leave that up to Irad.”
A field of seven was entered for the True North, with Flagstaff the one to beat coming off a game head decision in the Grade 1 Churchill Downs Stakes on May 1. The victory was the second in a row for the 7-year-old, who used a similar pace-stalking style to win the Grade 3 Commonwealth at Keeneland four weeks earlier.
“He’s doing really good, and he runs so well [outside of California] that bringing him to Belmont for the first time doesn’t really concern me,” trainer John Sadler said. “He’s been a gem of consistency his whole career. He ran a couple of good seconds to C Z Rocket last year, and his last race at Churchill was amazing to watch. At midstretch, I thought he was going to run fourth.”
The remainder of the lineup features Grade 3 winner Phat Man, who finished fifth, just 1 1/4 lengths behind Flagstaff, in the Churchill Downs; Looking At Bikinis, American Power, and Wicked Trick, the top three finishers, respectively, in a loaded allowance race here April 24, and the stakes-placed New York-bred Big Engine.