Itsmyluckyday, Atreides pointing for Cigar Mile

MIAMI – At a time of year when most of the top handicap horses stabled on the East Coast have travel plans that will take them to Miami for the winter, Itsmyluckyday and Atreides will find themselves heading in the opposite direction over the next couple of weeks.

Itsmyluckyday and Atreides will ship from their south Florida base to Aqueduct to compete in the Grade 1 Cigar Mile on Nov. 29. Each turned in a four-furlong work eight miles and about 90 minutes apart Wednesday. Itsmyluckyday cruised in 52.40 seconds at Gulfstream Park West after the renovation break, and Atreides went in a swift 47.12 over the Gulfstream Park strip shortly after dawn.

Itsmyluckyday is coming off a third-place finish as the 7-5 favorite in the Grade 2 Kelso Handicap at Belmont Park on Sept. 27. Itsmyluckyday had captured four of his five previous starts, including the Grade 1 Woodward at Saratoga. His only setback during that period was a second-place finish four weeks before the Woodward in the Grade 1 Whitney.

“I’m just going to put a line through that last race for a variety of reasons,” said Eddie Plesa Jr., who trains Itsmyluckyday for his wife, Laurie, and the Trilogy Stable. “He was forced to race in between horses going a one-turn mile while coming off two very big efforts in Grade 1 races at Saratoga. Any combination of those things probably made him run somewhere between where I expected him to run and where he did.”

Trainer Marty Wolfson said he is throwing out Atreides’s last start, a dull sixth-place performance as the even-money favorite in the Grade 2 Indiana Derby. The loss was the first in four lifetime starts for the 3-year-old son of Medaglia d’Oro, who opened his career with three lopsided victories over the summer at Gulfstream Park. Atreides earned triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures for each of those efforts. He is one of handful of horses to begin a career with three straight triple-digit Beyers.

“I think a combination of running under the lights for the first time and the fact he wound up being taken so far back after the start are the reasons he ran so poorly in Indiana,” said Wolfson. “He’s done well since returning to Florida after that race, and I think a one-turn mile is the perfect distance for him.”

Wolfson said either Javier Castellano or Irad Ortiz Jr. likely will be aboard for Atreides’s New York debut.

Wolfson also reported that Swinger’s Party came out of her three-quarter-length victory in last Saturday’s $100,000 Florida Millions Distaff Preview in good order but won’t run again until the Florida Millions Distaff on Jan. 17. Swinger’s Party came into the Distaff Preview idle since her seventh-place finish in the Grade 3 Shuvee Handicap at Saratoga on July 27.