Gilker trying to break the ice at new home track
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Over the course of his 44-year training career, Robert Gilker has had some success shipping horses to Emerald Downs from his former home base of Hastings Racecourse in Vancouver, British Columbia. Now that he’s based at Emerald, with Hastings not hosting a 2026 meet and facing an uncertain future, Gilker has found matters more challenging.
“I was picking and choosing when I was coming down before, bringing in a horse for a race,” said Gilker, who is winless with a lone second in seven starts at Emerald this year. “Now I’ve just got my horses and it’s tough here.”
Gilker has six horses stabled at Emerald. When he was in Canada, his stable was much bigger, but lately he’s “been whittling down because things haven’t been looking rosy.”
Due mainly to a dwindling horse population, Emerald recently got approval to drop four Fridays in August from its schedule, something that concerns Gilker and some of his backstretch peers. He could use some good news, and the 7-year-old gelding Stanford Bay stands a decent chance of fleshing out those positive vibes in Friday’s second race, a $15,000 claiming sprint at six furlongs.
Stanford Bay raced very competitively in the waning days of Hastings’s 2025 meet, posting an 8-2-1-3 record and notching career-best Beyer Speed Figures in the mid-70s. His first race at Emerald, a $22,500 claiming affair July 3, could not have gone worse, as he stumbled badly at the start and was never a factor, finishing sixth by 19 1/4 lengths under Adrian Castellanos.
“I probably want to put a line through it because he came out on his knees and lost all chance on the break,” Gilker said. “It was a tougher race. I’d been entering him in $15s and they weren’t filling. I had to get a start into him. It’d been so long.”
Gilker is making a switch to apprentice rider Pablo Castillo, meaning Stanford Bay will carry low weight of 117 pounds. Stanford Bay will break from post 1 in a five-horse field, and Gilker’s strategy is fairly clear cut.
“I think we’re gonna try and send – get out of there and make them come to him,” Gilker said. “It’s mostly a speed-biased racetrack, maybe not so much on a Friday night. The kid who’s on can ride a little bit, so hopefully he gets him right out there.”
That’s easier said than done. To Stanford Bay’s immediate outside is the Blaine Wright-trained stakes winner Tougherthantherest, who tends to be forwardly placed. Barrister Proof also has speed, albeit more of the tactical type, on the far outside.
Baby Waylon, drawn in post 3, is capable of winning from off the pace, while stakes-placed Spectacular Tiger, making his first start for trainer Steve Fisher, is a wildly inconsistent front-runner prone to 30-point speed-figure swings.
On his best day, Baby Waylon is capable of beating these, but Gilker is hoping it’s his horse who steps up.
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