King's Harlequin brings group stakes class to Gulfstream allowance

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Trainer Christophe Clement may have taken the bulk of his potent stable up north for the season, but he’s still left some heavy hitters behind.

Included among them are the multiple stakes-placed Honey Pants, who won last Saturday’s allowance feature here in impressive fashion, and King’s Harlequin, a Group 3 winner as a 2-year-old in France, who makes her 2022 debut on Saturday at Gulfstream Park in one of three allowance events scattered through an 11-race program that kicks off at 1:05 p.m. King’s Harlequin goes in the eighth race, a one-mile conditioned allowance run over the turf course.

King’s Harlequin is not only a group winner, she beat some lofty competition as a 2-year-old when rallying to a 1 1/2-length triumph in the one-mile Prix d’Aumale in September 2020 at Longchamp. That field included runner-up Harajuku, who posted three graded stakes placings for trainer Graham Motion during the recently concluded Championship meet, and Coeursamba, who went on to become a Group 1 winner last May at Longchamp.

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King’s Harlequin has not started since finishing nine lengths behind Coeursamba in the Group 1 Poule d’Essai des Pouliches, or the French 1000 Guineas, 11 months earlier, but the layoff should not be an issue for the 4-year-old Irish-bred filly making her U.S. debut under Clement’s tutelage. King’s Harlequin has had six published works dating back to mid-February, four of those going five furlongs, and figures to be fit for a big effort off the bench for a barn sporting positive ROIs with first time North American starters and an 18 percent success rate over the last three years with horses returning from layoffs of six months or longer.

Some recent examples include Slipstream, who returned from a 156-day hiatus to win the Palisades Stakes last Sunday at Keeneland, and City Man, who came off a 125-day vacation to register a very impressive 2 1/4-length victory in the Danger’s Hour Stakes at Aqueduct the previous afternoon.

King’s Harlequin is one of several stakes-caliber horses making their 4-year-old debuts in this spot along with Por Que No, Tik Tok Famous, and Sweet Souper Sweet.

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Por Que No, winner of the Boiling Springs last summer at Monmouth Park for trainer J. Kent Sweezey, has not started since finishing eighth in Belmont Park’s seven-furlong Glen Cove on Oct. 15. She is one of two horses Sweezey entered in the main event along with the speedy Stop War.

Tik Tok Famous has been idle since winning an allowance race going a mile over the local turf course on Dec. 29 after being stakes-placed on both grass and the Tapeta here late last season. She joins stablemate Lovely Luvy from trainer Saffie Joseph Jr.’s barn in the feature, the latter having finished off the board in her last two starts, both against stakes competition, following a victory in the Sunshine Millions Filly and Mare Turf to kick off her 2022 campaign on Jan. 22.

Sweet Souper Sweet finished third over the synthetic surface in the Grade 3 Selene last summer at Woodbine but has been on the sidelines since a sixth-place finish over the same surface in the Ontario Damsel Stakes on Oct. 31.