Orange Grove prepped and ready
ELMONT, N.Y. – In case 13 races spread over nearly nine hours – not including travel time – wasn’t enough for you on Saturday, Belmont Park wheels right back Sunday with a 10-race card topped by a $77,000, first-level allowance race scheduled for 1 1/16 miles on turf.
Eleven colts and geldings were entered for the turf, with the likely favored Team Valor entry of Animal Kracker and Orange Grove parked in the outside two spots.
The English import Orange Grove had been away from the races for 17 months before he got beat a neck by the favored Town Extension at this condition going 1 1/8 miles at Keeneland on April 23. Orange Grove had to come five wide in the stretch of that race, his U.S. debut.
“He might have gotten a little tired right there at the end,” trainer Bill Mott said. “It was a mile and an eighth. I’d been looking for a mile race or a mile and a sixteenth for the first trip back, but it didn’t come up.”
Animal Kracker, trained by Tom Bush, is one of six horses in this field who emerged from the eighth race May 13, won by Seagate. Animal Kracker was pinched back at the break and then made an early, wide move before flattening out and finishing sixth, beaten 5 1/2 lengths.
Where’s Danny and English Minister, second and third in that May 13 race, are back in this spot. English Minister was scratched out of an off-the-turf race at Pimlico on Friday to run in this spot, according to trainer Michael Trombetta.
KEY CONTENDERS
Orange Grove (Beyer: 83)
◗ He ran a winning race in his U.S. debut.
“He was a horse we got early,” Mott said. “It took him a while to get in the game – he was sort of a lazy-training horse. By the time we ran him, he was working better and doing better, and he ran a real good race for a horse that had been off that long.”
◗ Junior Alvarado rides.
Adirondack Dancer (Last 3 Beyers: 74-85-86)
◗ New York-bred ran fifth in the open, first-level allowance won by Seagate, beaten 4 1/2 lengths. That race was his first in six months.
“I think he needed the race,” trainer Linda Rice said. “He won all his easy conditions. The open a-other-than, he needed a race to pick him up to beat that group.”
◗ He has lost his last nine starts since winning an optional claimer at Saratoga in August 2013.
◗ Jose Ortiz replaces Cornelio Velasquez, who rides Rice’s other entrant, Bigger Picture, who is coming off a win for $50,000 claiming in his first start after a six-month layoff.