Padilla brothers unearth Red Zone Runner's true calling
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When Hugo Padilla entered Red Zone Runner in the Grade 2 Wood Memorial in April, he thought the last-out 15 1/2-length Parx stakes winner was ready to take a bounding leap forward. That endeavor failed, but the trainer has since made a number of interesting discoveries which seem to have led to a budding career on turf.
“You see that?” Padilla said. “How horses turn around, huh?”
After his colt finished 12th and last in the Kentucky Derby prep at Aqueduct, Red Zone Runner caught another fast track in a statebred allowance at Parx in May. Despite going off at 8-5, he finished sixth by 44 1/4 lengths, and his trainer quickly made sense of the puzzling result. As it turns out, when he romped in the $75,000 City of Brotherly Love in March, the sloppy track had more to do with it than he thought.
Padilla spent the next few weeks agonizing over next steps with his brother, exercise rider Hector Padilla, who was clamoring for him to try the turf.
“He kept saying to me, ‘Hugo, put this horse on the grass. This horse floats on the track. He doesn’t hit the ground. He’s so smooth. This horse is a grass horse,’ ” Padilla recalled his brother saying. “I didn’t know. All his races were on the dirt.”
The trainer eventually capitulated and entered Red Zone Runner at Penn National on June 11, when he made his turf debut and finished fourth in an open-company allowance against stout older rivals. Padilla was encouraged by the effort, and in a more forgiving statebred allowance 13 days later, Red Zone Runner never looked back, pulling clear by 5 3/4 lengths in a commanding effort.
With turf and mud now confirmed to be Red Zone Runner’s preferred goings, Padilla said he plans to return to Penn National on Aug. 14 for the $75,000 Crowd Pleaser, a 1 1/16-mile turf stakes for Pennsylvania-bred 3-year-olds. He may try to find another race in between, as his colt is clearly making the most of his new direction.
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