Illman: How I'd play Aqueduct for Saturday, Nov. 7
I'll key the following horses in multiple-race wagers and will play them to win if they meet my personal value line requirements:
Race 8 – WALK CLOSE (10) – 8-1 Morning Line, 5-1 Value Line
The feature race at the Big A on Saturday afternoon is the Grade 3, $200,000, Long Island Handicap for fillies and mares at 1 1/2 miles on turf. It’s a solid race full of evenly matched runners, but I’m playing Walk Close, an extremely consistent filly trained by Christophe Clement.
Walk Close raced in excellent form over the spring and summer. Two starts back, she finished third in the faster division of the 11-furlong Keertana Stakes at Churchill Downs. She was in some traffic in the upper stretch, had to alter course to the rail, and finished nicely with a good gallop-out. That race produced four next-out winners and Walk Close was one of them.
She returned with a good inside-out rallying trip in the Grade 3 Modesty Handicap at 1 3/16 miles at Arlington Park. Three next-out winners came from that live heat.
Walk Close hasn’t raced since the Modesty and it’s somewhat concerning that she missed the major stakes races for fillies and mares this summer at Saratoga. Clement does good work with horses returning for this kind of break, however.
Over the past five years, Clement-trained runners Discreet Marq, Denomination, and Summer Front all came back from 100-plus days on the shelf to win graded stake turf routes. I’ll trust that Clement has Walk Close ready for action.
Will she have enough pace to adequately aid her late charge? I believe she will. Goldy Espony (1) looks like the controlling speed, but she packed it in last time when pressured and Clement entered two other horses with tactical speed that could help set things up for Walk Close.
Race 9 – SPOOKED OUT (1) – 5-2 Morning Line, 2-1 Value Line
I’ll take 2 to 1 on Spooked Out in the finale. A Todd Pletcher-trained second-time starter, Spooked Out ran very well in the faster division of statebred maiden special weights on Oct. 10 at Belmont.
This Mike Repole homebred hustled out to set the pace while three wide and dispatched his closest pursuers only to be run down in the stretch by Flexibility, a favored first-time starter from the Chad Brown barn. Flexibility returned to finish a good second earlier this week (86 Beyer) in the Grade 2 Nashua Stakes.
Spooked Out will have to motor from the inside post and could face some other speed, but if he runs back to his debut, he’ll be very tough to down.
Hit It Once More (4), the beaten favorite in the slower division on Oct. 10 and Cause for Surprise (10), an upwardly mobile pace-tracker for the hot Gary Gullo barn, are worth using in exotics.
Race 7 – SEND IT IN (3) – 7-2 Morning Line, 4-1 Value Line
Uncle Sigh (2) is the horse to beat in an entry-level allowance race for New York-breds as he makes his first start for new connections, but it’s hard to trust him off his two races since returning from an injury-induced lengthy layoff. The problem I had with this race is that the alternatives have their own questions to answer regarding overall quality.
I have to use Uncle Sigh in all multiple-race bets, but will take a shot with Send It In, a Pletcher-trained gelding who walloped a short field of open starter allowance horses last month at Belmont. Send It On did drift out in midstretch before being corrected by Javier Castellano and he might not get away with such shenanigans in this spot.
Send It In does project for a nice trip stalking the speeds, though, and he’s lightly raced enough that one can project improvement. A little bit of improvement would put him over the top in this field as he already seems just as fast as the other main contenders.
I’ll play him with Uncle Sigh, Full of Mine (8), and Repent Twice (11)
Mike Beer, Matt Bernier and I will handicap these races, as well as some others from Churchill, Gulfstream West, and Del Mar on our live video stream beginning at 3 p.m. Eastern at live.drf.com. I’ll update there for scratches and course conditions.