Minute Waltz tuned up for return in Churchill allowance
RACE REPLAY IS NOT AVAILABLELOUISVILLE, Ky. – Minute Waltz is fresh, fit, and eager. Trainer Phil Bauer hopes it all means the 4-year-old filly is ready to win after being away for a little more than six months.
“I hope she doesn’t make a liar out of me,” Bauer said of Minute Waltz returning to action under the Churchill Downs lights in the last of eight races on a twilight Thursday card. “But I really am expecting her to return to the level she was at before – or hopefully even better. The time off really did her good, and she’s as honest as her form shows.”
Minute Waltz, with 11 works since mid-March, is one of three logical favorites in a field of nine fillies and mares in the Thursday feature and nightcap. Social Dilemma and Pharoah’s Heart are the other major players in the only allowance on a program that kicks off a four-day race week with a 5 p.m. Eastern first post.
Minute Waltz has won just once in 12 starts, but with four seconds and four thirds has already earned $154,850 for Bauer’s only client, Richard Rigney. The bay Nyquist filly squeezed all her races into a 13-month period, starting in October 2020, and “when I was about ready to throw her on a van last December to go to New Orleans, Richard suggested maybe she deserved a break, given how hard she’d been going at it,” said Bauer, who has Rigney’s 24 horses stabled at Churchill.
“We turned her out for 60 days and it really seems like it was the right move,” he said.
Minute Waltz will have Martin Garcia aboard from post 6 when she makes her first start since Nov. 21 in a first-level allowance that includes $57,500 in Kentucky-bred bonuses in its $127,000 purse. Social Dilemma (post 8, Colby Hernandez) and Pharoah’s Heart (post 5, Corey Lanerie) figure to provide the chief opposition following runner-up efforts at this same level in their last start. Pharoah’s Heart and Roc’s Princess (post 1, Jon Court), both Florida-breds, are the only starters ineligible for the added money.
Bauer has been enjoyed a solid first month to a Churchill spring meet that runs through July 4. His three winners include Played Hard in an allowance and Little Mombo in a maiden-special, and he’s glad they have helped put Rigney in the race for the meet’s leading owner. His $225,733 in stable earnings, helped by the record-level purse structure at Churchill, are just fine with the 37-year-old Bauer, who with his wife, Ashley, a former Churchill clocker, is “crazy busy” raising their three young children, ages 8, 7, and 5.
“The goal at Churchill is always to have Richard lead the owner standings,” said Bauer, noting Rigney’s three wins have him in a six-way tie for the top spot through Sunday. “We’d love to have this filly Thursday help us along.”
A daytime high of 76 and a 60 percent chance of rain are in the local forecast for Thursday. Post time for the finale is 8:23.