A fresh Dakota Gold looks like one to beat in Gio Ponti Stakes

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Though it wasn’t trainer Danny Gargan’s first choice, Saturday’s $135,000 Gio Ponti Stakes for 3-year-olds at Aqueduct looks like a good spot for Dakota Gold to pick up his fourth career stakes win.

The Gio Ponti is slated for 1 1/16 miles on Aqueduct’s outer turf course where the rails came down for the first time this meet on Friday.

Gargan was pointing Dakota Gold to the Grade 3, $300,000 Bryan Station on Oct. 29 at Keeneland. But since earnings in restricted stakes do not count toward eligibility in open stakes at Keeneland, Dakota Gold was relegated to the also-eligible list in that oversubscribed race and was forced to scratch.

Dakota Gold, a son of Freud, has won 4 of 6 career starts and was actually the betting favorite in the 2021 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Del Mar after Modern Games was mistakenly scratched and ran – and won – for purse money only. Dakota Gold finished fifth, beaten 2 1/4 lengths. He went off favored due to his 2 1/2-length score in the $500,000 Nownownow Stakes at Monmouth Park.

This year, Dakota Gold has been kept in restricted company. He won two divisions of the New York Stallion Stakes – the Spectacular Bid in June and the Cab Calloway at Saratoga in August. In between, he was beaten a head by Practice Squad in the Rick Violette, a race restricted to New York-breds.

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That Dakota Gold hasn’t run since Aug. 17 isn’t a concern to Gargan, considering how big the colt ran off a 226-day layoff in winning the Spectacular Bid in June.

“If he runs that race back he’ll be tough here,” Gargan said.

Gargan expects Dakota Gold to be sitting just off the pace under Manny Franco as he plans to have his other horse, Riot House, on the lead. Riot House will break from post 3 under Kendrick Carmouche.

Riot House, a gelding by Violence, won a maiden and an allowance race at Gulfstream Park in the spring. He was coming off a five-month layoff when he ran sixth in the Toronto Cup on Sept. 10 at Woodbine.

“He wasn’t ready, I was giving him a race to get him fit,” Gargan said. “You can’t train him as hard, so I needed to get a race in him.”

On Nov. 11, Riot House worked a sharp half-mile in 47.20 seconds over the Belmont Park turf course.

Trainer Todd Pletcher has entered two for the turf and a third as main track only. Steady On, a son of Pioneerof the Nile, went 2 for 2 going a mile over the Aqueduct turf course and now steps into stakes company for the first time. He was a perfect-trip winner of a first-level allowance on Oct. 22 that earned a field-best 95 Beyer Speed Figure.

Grand Sonata will competing in his 10th consecutive stakes race. He began the year with stakes wins at Gulfstream Park in the Dania Beach and Grade 3 Kitten’s Joy. Most recently, he was third behind Celestial City in the Grade 2 Hill Prince.

If the race is moved to the main track, Pletcher will run Be Better.

Churchtown, beaten a neck in the Toronto Cup, ships down for trainer Roger Attfield. Ohtwoohthreefive, Wicked Fast, Wow Whata Summer, and Marinara Sauced complete the field on turf.

The Gio Ponti goes as race 7 on a 10-race card that begins at 11:50 a.m.

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