More Than a Party vs. Flutterby in allowance feature

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – A field of eight fillies and mares led by the Grade 3-placed More Than a Party and the Grade 2-placed Flutterby will square off in Wednesday’s $44,000 optional-claiming/allowance feature at six furlongs.

More Than a Party is launching a comeback again, having had only one start since May 2016, finishing a tiring 10th going 7 1/2 furlongs on turf here Feb. 24. More Than a Party, a distant second behind Merry Meadow in the Grade 3 Hurricane Bertie in 2015, won an optional claimer similar to Wednesday’s headliner by seven lengths while making her second start off a layoff here last spring.

“She chipped a knee racing in the slop at Monmouth last spring, and we took the chip out,” trainer and co-owner Eddie Broome said. “She’s been ready to run for a while, but there were just no races for her, so I finally put her on the turf around two turns because she needed to run. She’s tough to handle, she is really fast and ran off with the rider that day. This race is a little farther than I’d really like, but hopefully she’s ready to go.”

Flutterby also has had only one recent start, finishing sixth and last in the Sunshine Millions Distaff on Jan. 21 in her first start in 10 months. Flutterby has not won a race since capturing an overnight stakes here in September 2015. Flutterby is trained by her 96-year-old owner and breeder, Jerry Bozzo.

Other key contenders include Hola Charlotte, who has finished third and second against similar opposition in her last two starts, and Savingtime.

◗ The first 2-year-old races of the season are on tap Wednesday and Thursday, both at 4 1/2 furlongs. A field of seven fillies was entered for Wednesday’s second race, including two each from trainers Stanley Gold and Javier Negrete. Wesley Ward will send out the potential favorite, Lounge Act, while Jacks or Better Farm, a perennial leader in the local 2-year-old division, counters with the homebred Pantyhose, a full sister to the multiple stakes winner Twotwentyfive A.

◗ Antonio Sano, who is readying Fountain of Youth winner Gunnevera for a trip to Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby, reached a milestone when sending out the 500th winner of his U.S. training career, Gio Patricia, in the fourth race here Sunday. Sano won more than 3,300 races in Venezuela prior to coming to the U.S. in 2009. He saddled his first U.S. winner, Scorbit, at Gulfstream Park in April 2010.

◗ A field of nine 3-year-olds led by the promising Classic Rock was drawn for Friday’s $75,000 The Roar Stakes, an overnight test at seven furlongs.

Classic Rock, idle since defeating Beasley in a rapidly run seven-furlong allowance race Jan. 6, will face a lineup that includes the speedy, stakes-placed Canadian-bred Katalox and Coleman Rocky, who finished seventh in the Grade 1 Florida Derby last out.

◗ Jockey C.J. McMahon, who shifted his tack here for the first time at the conclusion of the Fair Grounds meet, is off to a fast start, having won three races last weekend, including both ends of Sunday’s early daily double. McMahon set a Lone Star Park record for the most victories by a jockey last spring and summer and has won more than 200 races in each of the past two years. His agent is Walter Blum Jr.