Mia Camila will be dangerous with race under her belt

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – The top six finishers from a Florida-bred allowance four Fridays ago at Gulfstream Park will square off again – and trainer Jose D’Angelo has reason to hope for a different result.

“To me, she needed the start,” D’Angelo said of Mia Camila, who tired to finish fourth in a Feb. 3 race run under the same hybrid conditions governing the Friday feature at Gulfstream. “Now that she has one race under her belt, for sure she’s going to improve a lot for this race.”

Mia Camila was returning from a five-month layoff when she set the pace in the Feb. 3 race for which Saffie Joseph Jr. saddled the top two finishers, Riveting Spirit and Tamarindo. Along with Judge Judith (third), Pretty Keen (fifth), and Lookinlikeaqueen (sixth), they’ll all be back in the same starting gate when the eighth of nine races is run on a modest Fountain of Youth Eve program.

The $54,000 allowance for statebred fillies and mares will be run at a mile on turf, with Riveting Spirit, a seven-time winner, eligible by way of a $20,000 claiming option. The 6-year-old chestnut mare will have leading jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. aboard breaking from post 4 as an obvious favorite to repeat.

D’Angelo, however, said the Feb. 3 tightener for Mia Camila could produce a change in the pecking order.

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“She was a solid 3-year-old last year, but then she got some bone bruising and that’s when we sent her to the farm for rest,” he said. In her return, “she wasn’t ready 100 percent. A lot of times a horse will need a race to be more ready.”

D’Angelo said Mia Camila might have been a bit too keen off the layoff and that he will instruct jockey Javier Castellano to try to ease her just off the early pace this time. Those tactics worked well in back-to-back races here last spring, when the daughter of Creative Cause won a May maiden race and finished first, albeit disqualified for interference, in a June allowance, both going two turns.

“That would help her,” said D’Angelo, a 32-year-old Venezuela native who last year won 96 races in just his fourth year of training in the United States.

A couple of long-layoff horses who weren’t part of the Feb. 3 crew, My Sunny Valentine and Yes I’m Spiteful, could contest the early pace from their outside posts, with Riveting Spirit and Mia Camila among those filing in behind. Down the stretch is when D’Angelo’s “needed-the-race” hypothesis will be tested.

First post Friday is 12:10 p.m. Eastern, with the lone allowance of the day going at 3:37. Warm and windy conditions are in the South Florida forecast.

The feature is part of a 20-cent Rainbow 6 (races 4-9) that began the five-day race week Wednesday with a jackpot carryover of more than $1 million. Gulfstream has scheduled a forceout of the Rainbow 6 for Sunday, when the wagering pool could grow to about $10 million, assuming no solo winner empties the jackpot before then. This will be the first forceout since Jan. 29.

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