Maidens run for big money to kick off Thursday card
There are three allowance races on the Thursday card at Belmont Park, but what really stands out is the nine-race program’s opener.
It’s a 2-year-old maiden special weight race, and like many such races at Belmont, there aren’t a lot of horses entered – six, including a coupled entry trained by Mike Mareina. But there is a lot of money involved.
This maiden race is worth a remarkable $100,000, a large enough purse to qualify as a graded race.
Trainer Mark Casse – whose far-flung stable seems to have tentacles in nearly every corner of the North American racing world these days – already won one of these massive-purse Belmont maidens when Tale of Two scored a highly impressive win May 5. Casse’s entrant here is Honor River, a colt from the first crop of To Honor and Serve who has done his preparatory work for this start at Keeneland.
DRF FORMULATOR FACT: No. 3 Honor River. Trainer Mark Casse is 12-1-2-1 with a $0.28 ROI over the past five years with juvenile first-time starters on dirt on the NYRA circuit. Click for more details. – Mike Hogan
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The female family slants toward turf, but the New York wing of the Casse outfit is rolling along with five wins from 16 starts at this meet, and Honor River might prove quick enough to win at five furlongs.
Juvenile ace Wesley Ward, of course, has a 2-year-old to run here. But there is every chance that Star Empire is using this race as a stepping-stone to a race at Royal Ascot. Star Empire was bred in England and is by the Fastnet Rock stallion Foxwedge.
DRF FORMULATOR FACT: No. 5 Star Empire. Trainer Wesley Ward is 26-8-4-1 with a $2.28 ROI over the past five years with juvenile first-time starters on dirt on the NYRA circuit. Click for more details. – Mike Hogan
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Mareina’s pair, Read My Lips (by Bernardini) and Terminal Speed (by Harlan’s Holiday) clearly have worked together on several occasions. Mareina had a good little run in New York a few years ago but, though he won with his only starter at this meet, he was quiet last season.
Guyana in Motion has made one start, and from the appearance of it, he will not contend. The twice-started Fuhrlong is the 8-5 morning-line favorite off a pair of speed-and-fade runner-up finishes, and there’s a good chance that one of the first-timers will prove his superior.
Race 7, a New York-bred, second-level, turf allowance race, has a deep, playable field and includes Uncle Sigh, who finished 14th in the 2014 Kentucky Derby but didn’t race for more than a year afterward. Uncle Sigh showed signs of spark last summer and might have found a home on turf, missing by a neck at this class level while making his grass debut April 23.