Oaklawn Park: Rose to Gold eyes Azeri, Apple Blossom

After winning the richest race in Texas last Saturday night, Rose to Gold now has her sights set on one of the most important races in Arkansas, the Grade 1, $500,000 Apple Blossom Handicap.

Rose to Gold has a spring goal of making the Oaklawn Park fixture after she forged through on the rail to win the $400,000 Houston Ladies Classic at Sam Houston on Saturday. She emerged from the race in good order, said her trainer, Sal Santoro, and provided she continues to do well she is to ship to Arkansas from her Calder base in March.

“The plan is to head up to Oaklawn for the Azeri and the Apple Blossom,” Santoro said of the track’s two major races for fillies and mares. “We’ll probably go eight, nine, 10 days out from the Azeri, depending on how the shipping schedule works with where she is in her training. We’ll coordinate all that. I’d like to get in there at least a week before to let her reacclimate herself to the track and to the environment.”

Rose to Gold spent about 2 1/2 months at Oaklawn last season and won the Grade 3, $150,000 Honeybee and Grade 3, $400,000 Fantasy. She had also shipped in from Calder.

“She really liked the track,” Santoro said. “She seemed to blossom up there. She was very happy there.”

Santoro said another reason to target the Arkansas races is the “perfect timing” between the Azeri and Apple Blossom. The Grade 2, $200,000 Azeri will be run on March 15, with the Apple Blossom to follow April 11.

Santoro brought a few horses along with Rose to Gold last year and may do the same this meet, with River Pride, a recent maiden special weight winner at Calder, probable to make the ship. Santoro said he would be a candidate for the $100,000 Gazebo for 3-year-olds at six furlongs March 22 and the $100,000 Bachelor for the same division on the Apple Blossom undercard April 11.

“I may take him and maybe one or two others,” said Santoro.

Rose to Gold, a $1,400 yearling purchase, is on the cusp of $1 million in earnings. She’s won 6 of 11 starts and $963,509, all for owners Kathleen Amaya and Raffaele Centofanti. Rose to Gold is a 4-year-old by Friends Lake. She won the Houston Ladies Classic by 1 1/2 lengths over Unusual Way, earning one of her best Beyer Speed Figures, a 97.

Street Story goes long

Street Story, winner of the $100,000 Dixie Belle opening weekend at Oaklawn, will make her two-turn debut Saturday in the $100,000 Martha Washington. She is one of 10 fillies in the one-mile race, which carries 17 preference points for the Kentucky Oaks.

The complete field from the rail with riders is Euphrosyne, Channing Hill; Racing Holiday, Alex Canchari; Xray Vision, Ramon Vazquez; Kiss Moon, Terry Thompson; Ireland, Israel Ocampo; Aragorn Ami, Norberto Arroyo Jr.; Street Story, Ricardo Santana Jr.; Cheerful Contender, Eurico Da Silva; Cow Catcher, Chris Emigh; and Redgrass Cat, Jareth Loveberry.

◗ Hall of Fame trainer Jack Van Berg is the guest all week long on a racing program produced by the Hot Springs, Ark., radio station KVRE, 92.9 FM. The show airs at 5 p.m. Fridays, and at noon on Saturdays and Sundays. Van Berg is based at Oaklawn.