Go Go oughta be gone at low odds

INGLEWOOD, Calif. - Trainer Warren Stute opened a Hollywood Park program on Thursday and checked the morning line on one of his runners. He was not happy to find his starter listed as an outsider.

"They're usually right," he said.

"But yesterday, I ran a longshot and I fooled them. I had a horse picked last, and I finished fifth in a seven-horse field. I've found the 4-5 shots run so much better than the 20-1's," he said with a grin.

On Saturday, Stute gets his wish for a short-priced favorite when he sends Go Go in the $100,000 Desert Stormer Handicap.

While Go Go will not be an attractive price in the Desert Stormer, a six-furlong race for fillies and mares, Stute could not ask for a better scenario.

A three-time stakes winner this year, Go Go is well-placed on the outside of the field of six. A stalker, the 4-year-old Go Go will give jockey Eddie Delahoussaye plenty of options.

Go Go has shown plenty of pace in the past, but is likely to stalk Image of Glory, the front-running winner of the Soviet Problem Handicap at Golden Gate Fields in March. The other four entrants - Kalookan Queen, Nena Maka, Venusberg, and Wired to Fly - are closers.

Go Go has not actually led in four starts this year, but was close to the pace when she won the Survive Stakes for California-breds on Jan. 1. She used a similar style with success in the Las Flores Handicap on Feb. 24 and when she finished second in the Irish O'Brien Stakes on March 17 to La Feminn.

Showing her versatility, Go Go surprised Stute with a closing rally in the Grade 3 Las Cienegas Handicap on the Santa Anita hillside turf course on April 8.

"She broke bad and I thought she'd be last," Stute said. "But when they closed, she never gave up."

On Saturday, Go Go's biggest threat is Kalookan Queen, who is returning from a 14-month layoff. Trained by Bruce Headley, Kalookan Queen has never won a stakes, but was third in the Grade 1 La Brea Stakes and second in the Grade 1 Santa Monica Handicap at Santa Anita in the winter of 1999-2000.

This year, Go Go has been a model of consistency, earning $233,020, a sum that seemed unlikely to Stute at the beginning of the season.

"If someone would have told me that, I would have thought they were crazy," he said.