Pan American rematches McKnight top three

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Taghleeb, Sadler’s Joy, and Patterson Cross were separated by a length when they finished one-two-three in the Grade 3 William L. McKnight Stakes here on Jan. 28. That trio hooks up again in another seemingly wide-open event, Saturday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Pan American Stakes at Gulfstream Park.

The Pan American, like the McKnight, is run at 1 1/2 miles over the Gulfstream Park turf. It will be the 13th race on Saturday’s 14-race card and immediately precedes the $1 million Florida Derby.

Bill Mott, the Hall of Fame trainer, has won the Pan American six times, most recently in 2014 with Newsdad. Patterson Cross, a 4-year-old son of Arch, is a horse Mott said he was high on at this time last year, though it took the horse some time to come around.

“He’s moved way up,” Mott said. “He’s a great big horse, and he’s just developing late. It looks like now he’s coming into his own.”

Patterson Cross won a first-level allowance race here Dec. 15, rallying from last. In the McKnight, where he was 38-1, he prompted the pace, made the lead turning for home, but was overtaken by Taghleeb and Sadler’s Joy in the stretch. Patterson Cross came back in the Grade 2 Mac Diarmida and attempted to rally from last but fell a head short to Wake Forest.

“He was running them down the other day,” Mott said. “They go another jump, he wins the whole thing.”

There appears to be enough of a pace presence in the field to allow Patterson Cross to contend with his late rally under Jose Lezcano.

Sadler’s Joy is another who does his best running late. He ended his 3-year-old season with three consecutive victories before falling a head short to Taghleeb when splitting horses in the stretch of the McKnight.

“He was a little bit far back, he had to wait for some running room to get through, ran a huge race,” said trainer Tom Albertrani, who won this race in 2013 with Twilight Eclipse. “We felt another jump, we would have come out on the other side. The horse ran well and continues to make promising strides.”

Taghleeb has won back-to-back stakes at this meet, first capturing the H. Allen Jerkens and then the McKnight. The 101 Beyer Speed Figure he earned in the McKnight is the 6-year-old’s career-best figure. He is 3 for 6 since trainer Mike Maker claimed him for $62,500 last summer at Saratoga.

“Claimed him with the idea of maybe winning something at Kentucky Downs, maybe a small stakes somewhere,” Maker said. “He went beyond what we expected.”

Maker also entered Designed for War, whom he is taking blinkers off in an effort to get him to relax.

Completing the field are Reporting Star, beaten a neck after setting the pace in the Mac Diarmida, Mr Maybe, Snag, and Montclair.

Orchid: Summersault on rise

The New York-bred Summersault has found herself at home on the Gulfstream Park turf course, and on Saturday, she will try to parlay that fondness into a graded stakes victory in the Grade 3, $200,000 Orchid for fillies and mares at 1 3/8 miles.

Summersault has provided trainer Mark Hennig with both of his victories at this meet in a pair of allowance races. While this will be her first try in an open stakes race, the field did not come up particularly tough. Olorda is a multiple graded winner, but she’s run only twice in the last year, and in her last race, she finished last after setting the pace. Quiet Kitten, second in the The Very One, hasn’t won in 15 months. Maquette makes her stateside debut, and Temple Fur makes her graded stakes debut.

Hennig said Summersault is very “course friendly,” and he believes the 5-year-old mare should be able to get the 11 furlongs of the Orchid.

“She’s always run well at a mile and an eighth,” Hennig said. “She sits there and waits and always seems to be finishing. You never know until they try it, but she seems to be the type that could handle it.”

Juddmonte Farms and trainer Bill Mott opted to skip the Orchid with Suffused and instead will run Maquette. Maquette is by Tapit and out of the Selkirk mare Announce, a Group 1 winner in Europe who was scratched from the 2011 Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf after sustaining a cut moments before the race.

Mott said Maquette is a “high-strung filly” whom he takes out to train very late in the morning at the Payson Park training center.

Olorda won the Grade 3 The Very One here in March 2016 and the Bewitch last April at Keeneland. In this year’s The Very One, she set a quick pace, checked sharply on the far turn, and finished last.

Temple Fur, who is 4 for 8 at Gulfstream, comes off a win in the Mary Todd, a starter handicap stakes Feb. 20.

The Orchid goes as race 5.