Kept Waiting has good chance to continue Falcone's hot hand at meet
OZONE PARK, N.Y. – In previous winters, trainer Robert Falcone would send the majority of his stable to either South Florida or Southern California, while maintaining a smaller string in New York.
While he would be enjoying the warmer weather in those locales, he would watch the races from Aqueduct with a tinge of regret.
“You look at the races here and you start kicking yourself, ‘Why are you not staying here?’ ” Falcone said Sunday at Aqueduct.
This year, Falcone flipped the script. He has kept the bulk of his horses in New York while just recently shipping three to Santa Anita. The decision to stay in New York has paid off handsomely for Falcone, who has 7 wins from 20 starters with $311,320 in purses earned through the first 18 days of the Aqueduct winter meet. During the previous two winters combined – one at Santa Anita, one at Gulfstream – Falcone won four races and his horses earned $197,250.
“We started claiming dirt horses early on and try to set up for the winter,” Falcone said. “It’s just not that tough. There are still good horses, good trainers, but all the super stock is down south.”
Thursday, Falcone will have two runners at Aqueduct, including Kept Waiting, a turf horse who will try the dirt for the first time in a first-level allowance for fillies and mares going seven furlongs. Kept Waiting, a 5-year-old New York-bred daughter of Broken Vow, has made all nine of her starts on turf. She is coming off a five-length win in a statebred allowance here Dec. 2.
Kept Waiting has trained well enough on dirt to give this a try, Falcone said, although he knows good works don’t always translate into a good race on a new surface.
“We gave her a little break early in the year so we figured we’d try the dirt,” said Falcone, who also runs Afilada in Thursday’s opener, a maiden $40,000 claimer. “It’s not the toughest field. Even if she does a little something, runs third or fourth, you can run her back one more time on the dirt and then run her on the grass.”
Six of the nine runners in Thursday’s feature have won just one race. Kept Waiting has won three. My Roxy Girl, a 7-year-old New York-bred daughter of Emcee, has won 11 of 54 starts. My Roxy Girl makes her first start off the recent claim for Linda Rice, who had the mare for about a year earlier in her career.
“These classy horses like her and some of these horses that run in New York, they circle in and out of form and right now it looks like she’s circled back into good form,” said Rice, who took her for $45,000 on Jan. 8 after getting outshook for $25,000 on Dec. 10. “She knows how to win, and when she’s in good form she’s hard to beat.”
Firing Carol and the four-time winner Madera, second and third behind the repeating winner Eloquent Speaker in this condition on Dec. 17, add depth to the field.
Golden Plume, from the barn of Chad Brown, also is trying dirt for the first time after going 1 for 4 on turf.
With eight races on Thursday’s program, first post is 12:50 p.m.