In November 2024, trainer Sal Santoro and owner Wallace Moore Jr. wracked their brains trying to figure out why 4-year-old filly Ashima was in another $8,000 claiming race, four weeks after she won at the same level by four lengths at Gulfstream Park. Without any noticeable hints of regression, Santoro guessed that it could be a behavioral problem. He decided that he could deal with that. He and Moore claimed her, watched her kick away to a similarly commanding 4 1/2-length victory, and braced themselves for a headstrong horse. She lived up to the billing. “It took a while to get her to where she trusted people again,” Santoro said. “When we first got her, you couldn’t go in the stall with her because there was a pretty good chance you weren’t coming out of there in one piece.” On Friday, Ashima will try to return to her winning ways for Santoro in the third race at Gulfstream, a $12,000 starter allowance with a purse of $33,000 at 1 1/16 miles on synthetic. Her improvement, both on and off the track, has been astounding since she entered Santoro’s barn. Before a hard-fought runner-up finish last time out, the filly was riding a six-race winning streak. :: Access morning workout reports straight from the tracks and get an edge with DRF Clocker Reports Santoro partially credits his filly’s improvement to the size of his operation. The trainer has only entered four horses this year, allowing him to take a hands-on approach. “I’m not a very good people manager,” Santoro said. “I’d rather keep it small so the horses get one-on-one, and it pays off.” After getting to know Ashima, Santoro changed just about everything. He adjusted her training regimen as well as her diet. It also was important to understand her quirks, of which she had plenty. For instance, he quickly discovered that she would act badly if she wasn’t the first horse out of the barn to train. Ashima has hit the track at 5:08 every morning since. Behavioral issues in the stable required constant attention, but Santoro and his staff eventually broke through. The trainer said that her demeanor is entirely different now. “She’ll come over and grab my T-shirt or something like that,” Santoro said. “Before, you’d walk in [her stall] and she’d pin her ears and wheel around. She’d say, ‘Go ahead, want to try it? Go, let’s see how this works out for you.’ ” After claiming her for $8,000, Santoro put together a careful plan to find manageable races that would allow him to keep her in his barn. Ashima made that part easy, overwhelming classier rivals with her competitive early speed and proving versatile between synthetic and turf. The filly has spent most of her stint with Santoro tearing through conditioned allowances, but when Santoro took a shot in the $75,000 Sunshine Filly and Mare Turf in January, the Florida-bred sprung a 7-1 upset in gate-to-wire fashion. She returned in the spring and won a pair of allowances in open company before coming up short by a half-length last month. Since returning from the layoff earlier this year, Ashima has been an even-money favorite in three straight races and will likely be favored again in the field of six on Friday. Santoro has done well by his filly to this point and she has never failed to deliver in turn. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.