Graded stakes winner New and Improved returns from 13-month layoff

Logic N Reason and Repatriated Gem ventured into stakes company in 2020 and are now looking to step down in class and get back in the win column. New and Improved was a graded stakes winner in 2019 and is looking for a suitable spot to get back into competition off a layoff of more than a year. Their paths converge Saturday at Tampa Bay Downs in the sixth race, a conditioned allowance-level event for fillies and mares on the turf that serves as a solid anchor on the 10-race card.

The sixth race, with a purse of $23,750, is for fillies and mares age 4 or older as of Jan. 1 who have never won two races other than maiden, claiming, starter, or statebred, or who have never won three races. None are entered for the optional $32,000 claiming tag.

New and Improved, trained by Chad Brown, still fits the race conditions, with wins in two of her four career starts, all in the second half of 2019. She earned the biggest victory of this field with a score in the Grade 2 Sands Point at Belmont that October, going 1 1/8 miles, a sixteenth farther than she is scheduled to traverse Saturday. Most recently seen finishing seventh on yielding turf in the Grade 2 Mrs. Revere in November 2019 at Churchill Downs, she returned to the work tab Oct. 3 and has breezed 11 times in preparation for her return to the races. Antonio Gallardo has the mount on New and Improved, who tends to rally from off the pace. They drew the outside post in the field of eight.

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Logic N Reason, trained by Christophe Clement, is likely to be among those making or attending the pace. She is ideally drawn for that mission in post 3 under Samy Camacho. She earned her maiden victory in October 2019 by stalking close in second before drawing clear to win by five. In her other victory, an allowance/optional-claiming race two starts back at Belmont Park, she won by setting the pace going this 1 1/16-mile distance. Most recently, Logic N Reason finished fourth in the Cellars Shiraz Stakes at Gulfstream Park West.

Repatriated Gem won an allowance/optional-claiming race in August at Monmouth. She then stepped into the Eatontown Stakes, finishing fifth in an off-the-turf edition that nevertheless came back well, as the victorious Valiance returned to win the Grade 1 Spinster and finish second in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. Given a brief freshening, Repatriated Gem returned to the races in December and finished second at Tampa in a similar-level event to Saturday’s race. Trained by Michael Stidham, she will have Hector Rafael Diaz Jr. in the irons.