Hawthorne: Be leery of Rambling Richie going long in Jim Edgar Futurity
STICKNEY, Ill. – It does not take an elephantine memory to find the guiding handicapping principal for the Jim Edgar Illinois Futurity on Saturday at Hawthorne.
It was just last weekend in the Futurity’s sister race, the Pat Whitworth Illinois Debutante, that heavily favored Sasy Ms Elizabeth, a horse superior in sprints but trying her first route race, went down in flames.
Her analogue in the Futurity, which will offer a purse of about $125,000, is Rambling Richie, whose 2-1 morning-line odds could easily be driven lower by bettors eying the colt’s 2 1/2-length win over similar company in the Nov. 9 Sun Power Stakes and the accompanying 80 Beyer Speed Figure, the field’s best.
But the Edgar, around two turns at 1 1/16 miles, is a different, longer ballgame, and one at which Rambling Richie might not excel. Trained by Larry Rivelli, Rambling Richie has handled two racing surfaces, with an open-lengths maiden win on Arlington’s Polytrack preceding his Sun Power score at Hawthorne, but he has a sprint-leaning pedigree and has done all his work from the front end, which could get crowded Saturday.
The betting public will certainly see Solar Flair as the logical alternative. Second to Rambling Richie in the Sun Power, Solar Flair is a two-time winner with a stalking style and a pedigree with more stamina than Rambling Richie’s. Solar Flair, trained by Jim DiVito, has raced around two turns once, finishing 12th of 13 in the Grade 3 Bourbon at Keeneland, but he could just as easily have been overmatched by higher-class opposition as overwhelmed by a longer two-turn trip.
Still, it’s important to keep in mind that Sasy Ms Elizabeth’s 14-1 upsetter in the Whitworth, Lakotadreamcatcher, entered the race a six-start maiden with little to recommend her on the surface of her form. But what Lakotadreamcatcher brought to the table was stamina, and with several front-end types entered in the Edgar, a clunking closer less obviously talented than the top betting choices could do the trick.
There are two leading possibilities in that realm: Prado U, who slogged his way to a Hawthorne dirt-route victory over $50,000 maiden claimers last out, and A Step Ahead, a full brother to the top Illinois-bred Giant Oak, a two-turn, grind-it-out type if ever there was one.