Positive Review proven at one mile
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HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Positive Review is the only member of the field in Saturday’s co-featured ninth race at Gulfstream Park, a $52,000 allowance/optional-claiming event for older horses going a mile on the main track, without some sort of stakes experience. Despite that fact, he also may be the one to beat in the second of three consecutive allowance events on an 11-race card that kicks off at 12:50 p.m.
Positive Review will be getting a class check Saturday, although he certainly proved his affinity for the distance. He stretched to a mile for the first time to defeat much softer allowance company by 1 1/2 lengths following a heated pace duel in his last start, on July 29. The game effort earned the steadily improving 4-year-old a career-best 88 Beyer Speed Figure and was further flattered after runner-up Slim Slow Slider returned to defeat similar opposition in his next start.
Positive Review has been freshened since that outing but is working forwardly for the difficult task at hand, showing six works over the past five weekends, culminating with a bullet five furlongs in 1:00.60 last Saturday at Palm Meadows.
“I just haven’t been able to get a race to go for him since the last one, but he certainly handled a mile decently in his last start and is a horse progressing at this time,” trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. said when asked about the 11 weeks between outings for Positive Review. “He’s training very well and I expect him to run another big one in his current form, although this is obviously a big jump in class for him, especially with Steal Sunshine in the field. He’s going to have to move forward again to win.“
Steal Sunshine is back home off another big race out of town, a third-place finish in the Grade 3 Iselin at Monmouth Park from which runner-up Trademark returned to finish second, beaten just a head by Clapton, in the Grade 2 Lukas Classic at Churchill Downs. Steal Sunshine, who captured the Ellis Park Derby at 3, was upset as the 4-5 favorite when beaten three-quarters of a length by The Skipper Too in his last local appearance, in an overnight handicap July 2.
Miles D is a big question mark returning to south Florida for just the second time and first since finishing a dull seventh as the 9-5 favorite in the Grade 3 Fred Hooper Stakes nine months earlier. Miles D, third in the Grade 1 Travers during the summer of 2021, has switched hands since his last start, a third-place finish in the Excelsior on April 1 at Aqueduct. He has moved from trainer Chad Brown into the barn of Amador Sanchez, for whom he has kept a regular work schedule that includes a near-bullet five furlongs in 59.40 on Sept. 23.
The remainder of the field includes the Victor Barboza-trained duo of stakes winners Grand David and Brooklyn Strong, Lightning Tones, and Eastside Cool.
Joseph also will have a strong hand in the co-featured 10th race carded under similar optional-claiming and allowance conditions as the previous event but over the synthetic Tapeta course. Joseph will send out the pair of Stat and Eldon’s Prince against a very well-matched field that also features the graded stakes-placed duo of Marwad and California Frolic, along with the Love Me Not, second best behind the odds-on Amstrong while making his local debut in the Bears Den Stakes four weeks earlier.
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