Friday TimeformUS Highlight Horse: Irish Jackson better than last result suggests
Aqueduct | Race 5 | Post Time 2:17 p.m. (ET)
She’s Awesome (#6) is clearly the horse to beat based on her last few efforts at this level since getting claimed by Linda Rice. However, it’s hard to ignore those 8 second-place finishes to go along with just 2 victories in 15 starts. That trend has continued since the claim, settling for minor awards despite going favored in each of those last 3 efforts. She figures to be a short price once again here, so you want to see her show some progression. She put in a good effort last time and just ran into a horse who showed improvement off the claim for Rick Dutrow. She will be involved in the finish here with her usual performance, but you have to decide how short a price you can take.
The most obvious alternative is Stop Giggling (#5), who finished just behind the favorite last time. The connections got away with risking her for the $20k tag on debut, as she was ready to fire that day and easily beat an overmatched field by over 5 lengths. Last time she was beaten to the lead and forced to stalk, but still stayed on decently for third, 3 lengths behind She’s Awesome. She looks like the main speed this time, and still has upside after just two starts.
I want to go in a different direction with a horse who I think has more upward mobility. Irish Jackson (#4) didn’t beat much when she won her career debut in the slop, but she did overcome a poor start to run down a heavy favorite. She was claimed out of that spot but went to the shelf for a long time. Yet she returned from the layoff for the new connections in November, and took a minor step forward. They waived the claiming tag that day, and then moved her up to this allowance level, so the connections clearly want to protect her. While the result last time looks poor on paper, she actually ran better than it appears. She broke forwardly and was reined in before getting shuffled back in traffic down the backstretch. She lost position to the point of being eliminated by the time they reached the quarter pole. She is likely capable of better here, and gets a rider upgrade to Isaac Castillo.