Imperial Hint to have final work for Mr. Prospector

Imperial Hint is scheduled to have a final pre-race breeze this weekend at his winter base at Tampa Bay Downs for the Grade 3 Mr. Prospector at Gulfstream Park as trainer Luis Carvajal Jr. looks ahead to what could be another big year for the horse he has dubbed “The Little Rocket.”

Imperial Hint will ship across the Florida peninsula next week from Tampa in Oldsmar, Fla., for the Mr. Prospector on Dec. 21. Carvajal said that seven-furlong race will be the last for Imperial Hint before he goes to Saudi Arabia for the $1.5 million Riyadh Dirt Sprint on Feb. 29.

Carvajal said Imperial Hint would work five furlongs.

“He was ready to run at Santa Anita, but we had a couple issues with the vet,” Carvajal said, referring to Imperial Hint being scratched from the Nov. 2 BC Sprint with a blistered coronet band stemming from the application of glue-on shoes.

With that disappointment behind him, Carvajal has returned to the bucolic setting of Tampa.

“It’s been just beautiful here,” he said by phone earlier this week. “The horse is loving it. He worked after we got here and again last week. I have to space out his works because he puts so much into them.”

Carvajal said he had hoped to run Imperial Hint last Sunday in the six-furlong Fall Highweight at Aqueduct but travel logistics proved too difficult. The seven furlongs of the Mr. Prospector “might be a little far, but I need to run him and we’ll have plenty of time to regroup him here afterward to get ready for the Saudi race,” which goes at six furlongs.

Imperial Hint, a Florida-bred owned by retired New Jersey businessman Ray Mamone, is a likely 2019 Eclipse Award finalist in the sprint division after winning two Grade 1 races this year, the Vanderbilt at Saratoga (with a 114 Beyer Speed Figure) and the Vosburgh at Belmont Park (103). Overall, he has won 14 of 23 starts and earned nearly $2.2 million.

Florida-breds take the stage

The last two stakes until mid-January at Tampa will be run Saturday when a pair of $125,000 statebred races anchor a 10-race card.

Those seven-furlong co-features – the City of Ocala for 3-year-old fillies and the Marion County for 3-year-old colts and geldings – are funded by the Florida Thoroughbred Breeders and Owners Association and restricted to horses eligible to the Florida Sire Stakes series. Entries were to be released Wednesday afternoon.

After Saturday, Tampa will go without a stakes for five weeks, when the Pasco and Gasparilla highlight the Jan. 18 card.

The major races for the 2019-20 meet are Sam F. Davis on Feb. 7 and the Tampa Bay Derby on March 8.

◗ A $22,500 first-level allowance that could produce a player or two in the local turf-stakes ranks is the highlight of the nine-race Friday card, which starts at 12:45 p.m. Eastern.

Dynadrive, trained by Jonathan Thomas, and Me and Mr. C, trained by Ned Allard, are the principals in a field of six 2-year-olds in the feature, race 5. Dynadrive races with blinkers off, while Me and Mr. C goes with blinkers on.