Friday TimeformUS Highlight Horse: Lord Captain gets appropriate class relief
Aqueduct | Race 2 | Post Time 1:51 p.m. (ET)
I Am the Law (#4) figures to go favored here as he drops in class out of a series of attempts against tougher allowance/optional-claiming competition. He was in career-best form here last winter just before going the sidelines for 10 months. He returned in November with a poor effort but has since improved his speed figures despite not really threatening in any of his recent starts. He now takes a logical class drop and figures to fit well against this field. My one reservation is the distance, since he’s run his best speed figures going two turns at 1 1/8 miles, and he seems to lack the speed he once possessed to get forward position in these one-turn mile events.
Beachwalker (#5) is another who could take money in here, and he’s a tough read. On his best day, he could certainly beat this field, and we saw one of his better efforts just two starts ago when he won a $40k claimer by over three lengths. However, the majority of his starts since the claim by David Jacobson have been disappointing. He regressed last time, and now he’s dropping back down into a claiming race. He did run one of his best speed figures going a mile back in December, but he’s generally been campaigned as a sprinter.
My top pick is Lord Captain (#2), who should be the biggest price of the three main players in this field. He’s another dropping in class out of an allowance/optional claimer, and the class relief makes sense for him. Linda Rice claimed him for $40k last May and got a career-best effort out of him first off the claim at Saratoga last summer. That 117 TimeformUS Speed Figure looked like an outlier at the time, and it's since proven to be so for this horse. Yet he didn’t run as badly as the result might suggest in his next start going 1 1/4 miles, which is simply too far for him. He was off for some time after that and hasn’t been competitive in two starts since returning this winter. Yet he was compromised by a slow pace in the slop two back going a distance that is too short for him. Then last time he was racing on the rail on a day when the inside path probably wasn’t the best place to be. I think he’s likely to run better against this softer field.