Grooms All Bizness sharp for repeat bid in Get Serious Stakes

Jorge Duarte Jr. and Richard Santulli’s Colts Neck Farm won a turf-sprint stakes June 8 at Churchill Downs, and on Sunday, much closer to home at Monmouth Park, they can win another.

Grooms All Bizness ran the best race to that point of his career winning the Get Serious Stakes a year ago at Mommouth and based on his long-layoff comeback run last month in the Jim McKay Turf Sprint at Pimlico, Grooms All Bizness has returned for his 5-year-old season a faster racehorse.

Duarte shipped the 7-year-old Nothing Better to Kentucky from Santulli’s Colt’s Neck training center just west of Monmouth, and Nothing Better delivered a half-length win last weekend in the $224,000 Mighty Beau Stakes. Two years younger, Grooms All Bizness has more latitude to improve than Nothing Better, especially after being gelded last fall.

“I think he came back better this year as a gelding,” Duarte said. “He used to get a little excited before the race, just wasting some energy.”

Pimlico’s indoor paddock, crowded to the hilt on Preakness Day, didn’t unnerve Grooms All Bizness, who was racing for the first time since July. The gelding got a good ground-saving trip until upper stretch, when he tried to hit a hole that Witty, rallying wide, slammed shut. Steadied, Grooms All Bizness had to be taken back to come around Witty, subsequently displaying a mighty turn of foot once clear, dashing away to a 1 1/2-length victory.

Grooms All Bizness handled that soft course better than many in the race, but the gelding has raced effectively on firmer footing.

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Grooms All Bizness came out of his race in good shape and went to Saratoga hoping to get into the Jaipur Stakes on the Belmont Stakes undercard. Lacking sufficient earnings to make the field, he winds up the likely favorite under Fernando Jara in the Get Serious.

Also entered are the second- and third-place finishers from the Jim McKay Turf Sprint at Pimlico, Witty and Smooth B. Witty, a good second in the Wolf Hill last summer in his lone Monmouth start, raced some five paths off the fence at Pimlico while Grooms All Bizness hugged the rail around the turn – Witty’s ground loss essentially cancels out Grooms All Bizness’s traffic trouble. Witty makes one run from the back of the field and probably prefers a longer trip than the five furlongs he gets Sunday.

If Souper Quest proves the primary Get Serious speed and establishes a clear lead, he’ll be tough. A 4-year-old with six starts, Souper Quest is very much a five-furlong horse, and over 5 1/2 furlongs last summer at Colonial Downs he set the pace and held for a solid third behind Nobals, who went on to win the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint.

Souper Quest returned from a layoff of nearly seven months in an April 28 turf-sprint handicap at Gulfstream, winning a pace battle but losing to late-running Xy Speed. No shame there, as Xy Speed was exiting a win that yielded a 102 Beyer Speed Figure and came right back to win again with a 99 Beyer.

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