Joseph sends streaking pair in allowance

The Friday feature at Gulfstream Park is a first-level allowance race, although that’s a bit misleading, given that all but one of the seven starters are entered for an optional $75,000 claiming tag.

Three-year-olds fillies will go 5 1/2 furlongs in the fourth of 10 Friday races at the South Florida track on a card that starts at 2 p.m. Eastern. The purse is $47,000 and contention runs fairly high.

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Saffie Joseph Jr., the leading trainer at the Gulfstream spring meet, holds perhaps the strongest hand with the uncoupled duo of Eye’s Reward and Princess Latina. The fillies are sporting win streaks of two and three races, respectively. Since being claimed by Joseph, Eye’s Reward has won both her races and Princess Latina has won her lone start.

R Prerogative, an odds-on favorite in both her starts this year, both for Georgina Baxter, is among the other contenders, along with Noncents, a last-out winner for Armando De La Cerda.

The only filly not entered for a tag is Abuela’s Love, who figures as one of the longer prices in the field. She returns from a layoff of more than nine months for Eddie Plesa Jr.

The feature is slotted just prior to the 20-cent Rainbow 6 (races 5-10), which had a jackpot of $113,821 when the four-day race week began Thursday.

The weekend highlight at Gulfstream is the $75,000 Added Elegance on Saturday. The first six-figure stakes of the summer meet are set for Aug. 3, with the first two legs in the Florida Sire Stakes series.

Handle rises amid cancellations

Gulfstream was among the prime beneficiaries when a heat wave led to a number of tracks in the Northeast and Midwest canceling their cards last weekend.

All-sources handle on an 11-race Gulfstream card Saturday, when Saratoga and other tracks canceled their cards, was $10,178,356, up 53 percent over handle ($6,638,987) for the corresponding Saturday in 2018.

The cancellations led to a collective drop in handle Saturday and Sunday in the United States of $20.1 million, or nearly 15 percent, compared to the same weekend last year.

◗ Matt Muzikar is the new agent for Reylu Gutierrez, who has been riding sparingly this summer at Gulfstream. Muzikar, based primarily in Florida, also represents Tyler Gaffalione, who is riding at Saratoga. Gutierrez, 23, is a native of Rochester, N.Y.

– additional reporting by Matt Hegarty