Late pick five starts with $180K carryover

Turfway Park plans to resume racing Friday after weather disruptions, and if the show does go on, it will do so with a $180,036 carryover in the late pick five.

Turfway did not race Wednesday – that card was shifted to Sunday, normally a dark day – and canceled the Thursday program after a snow and ice storm early in the week in Kentucky was followed by days of frigid temperatures with wind chills in the single digits. Another wave of snow is expected in the state on Friday, with snow accumulations up to eight inches in some areas. The high will not reach above freezing on Friday in Florence, Ky., where first post is scheduled for 5:55 p.m.

The pick five sequence begins in the fifth of nine races, an $80,000 maiden special weight for fillies and mares 4 years old and up. The 4-year-old Life’s for Living is intriguing as she makes her fourth career start, and first on a synthetic surface, for trainer William Morey, who does well at Turfway. The filly, by Uncle Mo, is out of millionaire Life Is Sweet, a multiple Grade 1 winner on synthetic, including the 2009 Breeders’ Cup Ladies Classic.

The sequence continues with a claiming race with a purse of $27,800, and then a maiden special weight for 3-year-olds. That race, with a purse of $41,200, is a maiden auction race, restricted to horses who sold for $50,000 or less in their most recent trip through a public sale. Serketas just makes the cutoff, selling for $50,000 at last year’s Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-year-old sale. The colt is unplaced in three starts thus far for Larry Demeritte – who has had a strong start to the Turfway season – but is by Authentic, whose progeny seem to be later bloomers.

Gallo de Fuego makes the cut on paper for this race. The colt was a $55,000 short yearling purchase at the Keeneland January sale, but then sold down as a pinhook prospect, going for $40,000 at the Fasig-Tipton Kentucky fall yearling sale – not an uncommon occurrence as young horses can change rapidly in their development, making them more or less attractive from month to month. Gallo de Fuego, making his first start on synthetic, is a six-start maiden.

The eighth race, serving as the nominal feature, is an allowance/optional claimer with a purse of $84,000 for older horses who have never won $12,750 twice other than, who have never won three races, or for a claiming price of $40,000. A good number in this field have never run at Turfway, making those who have already run on the Tapeta useful. Among those is Carl Pollard’s homebred Mercante, by champion Gun Runner and out of champion Caressing. In his second start off a layoff of more than a year, he was an impressive allowance winner last month at Turfway, posting a career-best Beyer Speed Figure of 88, also the top last-out number in this field. Trained by Brian Knippenberg, he gets a hefty weight break here with apprentice Oscar Villarreal in the irons.

First Strike is coming off a win for a $50,000 claiming tag – he is not entered for the tag here – over a solid field that included well-regarded Jace’s Road in third. That gave him three wins from five Turfway starts for Paulo Lobo.

The card’s nightcap is a $27,800 claiming race.

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