Keeneland: Summer Starlet could bloom into fall star in Alcibiades

When your boutique track runs a 17-day meeting, there’s no time for soft openings. Keeneland, as usual, hits the ground running.

A 10-race Friday card, first of the fall season, features three graded stakes races, all part of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Series, the Grade 1 Alcibiades – headed by divisional leader Summer Starlet – the opening-day highlight.

Also carded Friday: The Grade 2 Phoenix, a prep for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, and the Grade 2 Jessamine, a prep for the Juvenile Fillies Turf.

Racegoers should bring rain gear. Precipitation originally forecast to arrive Saturday now appears likely to affect Friday’s card. Rain could start mid-morning and persist into the evening.

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Saturday and Sunday look dry, however, and by the time Sunday’s program ends, eight Breeders’ Cup preps – three Grade 1s on Saturday, another Sunday – will have been run.

Those races take on added significance this year, with Keeneland set to host the Breeders’ Cup, on Oct. 30-31, for the fourth time. The track has less than a week from closing day of the fall meet on Oct. 24 to put finishing touches on Breeders’ Cup preparations.

Stakes action slows after opening weekend, but the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup for 3-year-old turf fillies comes up Oct. 9.

Daily first post is 1 p.m. Eastern, cards scheduled Wednesday through Sunday in weeks 2 and 3, Wednesday through Saturday during closing week.

The Eclipse Award-winning jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., sidelined since Aug. 8 with an ankle injury, returns to ride Friday’s card.

No 2-year-old filly has turned in stronger performances this year than Summer Starlet, who somehow went off at nearly 16-1 debuting Aug. 8 at Saratoga and now stands at 4-5 on the morning line for the $650,000 Alcibiades, run around two turns over 1 1/16 miles.

“She beat a bunch of good horses just to go to Saratoga,” said trainer Steve Asmussen, referring to morning work Summer Starlet put in from April through early July in Kentucky. “She’s never disappointed in a work, never disappointed in a race, and she still looks great.”

Summer Starlet made a sustained run from the rear of an eight-horse field and won her six-furlong debut by 6 1/2 lengths, going away. She stuck closer to the pace in the seven-furlong Spinaway, but that took nothing away from her finish: Summer Starlet cruised to a 4 3/4-length victory, her 97 Beyer Speed Figure best in her division.

“She broke okay in the maiden race and got outfooted, and in the Spinaway broke sharp, looked very handy, and looked in control the whole way,” Asmussen said.

Asmussen’s three previous Spinaway winners – Echo Zulu, Hot Dixie Chick, and Cashier’s Dream – all proved sprinters at heart, though Echo Zulu won the Alcibiades and Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies. Summer Starlet stands nearly 17 hands tall and has the pedigree and body type of a route horse. Asmussen compares her physically to Untapable, his Kentucky Oaks and Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner.

“Unlike Untapable, she’s extremely manageable and easy to be around,” he said.

Summer Starlet, oddly, has another new rider in the Alcibiades, with Flavien Prat taking the mount. Jose Ortiz rode the filly in her debut but was at Kentucky Downs for the Spinaway, where Ricardo Santana picked up the mount.

The Alcibiades, which drew eight runners, does not look like a slam dunk for the favorite. While Summer Starlet makes her route debut, Emphatic already has proven herself around two turns, romping in the one-mile Sorority on Aug. 29 at Monmouth. That start came about five weeks after Emphatic debuted with an easy sprint win at Colonial Downs. She was sent there, trainer Brendan Walsh said, to take advantage of her Virginia-registered status.

“There aren’t a ton of options for 2-year-old winners that time of year, so the race came up at Monmouth, and we said we’d take the opportunity to see if she’d step up to stakes level,” Walsh said. “She won well, and she’s really gone forward since that race mentally and physically.”

Emphatic drew the rail and should race forwardly under Tyler Gaffalione, while Walsh also runs Ever Forward, a last-start Ellis maiden winner over one mile who should show speed.

Forever Carina could prove a worthy rival for Summer Starlet. A half-sister to Kentucky Oaks winner Always a Runner, Forever Carina took advantage of a favorable pace setup rallying from ninth to win her debut by two lengths racing over 6 1/2 furlongs Aug. 22 at Saratoga. This, trainer Chad Brown said, was the case of a route horse with raw ability to win a sprint.

“She trained brilliantly since she stepped in the barn. She’s a lot bigger and has more range at this age than her sister, and she looks like a horse looking for two turns sooner than later,” Brown said. “She couldn’t be training any better.”

It’s opening week of Breeders’ Cup month at Keeneland. She had better be.

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