House Rules drops into allowance
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – After taking on the best 3-year-old fillies in training, House Rules will get significant class relief in an $85,000 first-level allowance race going 1 1/8 miles on Sunday’s card.
House Rules, a daughter of Distorted Humor, will go out for trainer Jimmy Jerkens after making the first eight starts of her career for Jimmy’s father, the Hall of Fame trainer Allen Jerkens, who is now based in south Florida.
House Rules, owned and bred by Joseph Shields, has been in New York since June, when she ran sixth behind Sweet Reason in the Grade 1 Acorn Stakes at Belmont. She then came back in the Grade 1 Mother Goose and finished fourth, 13 1/4 lengths behind winner Untapable.
Jimmy Jerkens worked House Rules on the turf, but he didn’t like the way that went. He has liked her last two breezes on dirt.
“She’s come around the last three weeks,” Jerkens said. “I was a little disappointed the way she was doing. She didn’t work good on the turf the other day. Her two works since then were really good.”
Though Jerkens said House Rules has the body type that suggests she’d be better around one turn, he said her better races have been around two turns. House Rules was beaten a neck by In Tune in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Oaks going 1 1/8 miles at Gulfstream on March 29.
House Rules will take on Unbridledexplosion and Madaket Millie, second and third behind Got Lucky in a spot similar to Sunday’s race July 23. Got Lucky was entered to run in Saturday’s Grade 1 Alabama.
“It’s not an easy race,” Jerkens said. “If you go by numbers, there are a couple of horses with better numbers than her.”