Promising Great Navigator begins comeback
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Eddie Owens remembers when Great Navigator was a 2-year-old standout at Monmouth Park in 1992.
“I was there when he broke his maiden,” Owens recalls of the 1990 foal who proceeded to post a 24-1 upset of the 1992 Hopeful at Saratoga later that summer. “I was working for Phil Serpe at the time.”
Fast forward more than 30 years, and Owens is now the trainer of a different Great Navigator, one of the major players in the Thursday feature at Gulfstream Park. The latest incarnation of Great Navigator had been pointing for the Fountain of Youth Stakes won by reigning divisional champion Forte, but a subpar work beforehand led Owens to withhold the colt from that March 4 race at Gulfstream.
“He had a little setback, a temperature,” said Owens, 63. “He didn’t really gallop out the way I wanted him to” following a half-mile breeze here Feb. 25, “so I skipped the Fountain of Youth. It was a tough race anyway. I don’t know if I could’ve beat Forte that day or even run second.”
Unraced since finishing second at 18-1 in the Grade 3 Sanford at Saratoga in just his second career start last summer, Great Navigator will be toting the silks of Holly Crest Farm when returning from an eight-month layoff in race 8, a $72,000, first-level allowance that anchors a nine-race Thursday card. The homebred colt will have Paco Lopez aboard breaking from post 7 in a field of eight 3-year-olds.
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“I think he’s going to run good,” said Owens, who began training for Holly Crest nearly three years ago, shortly after the May 2020 death of the stable’s longtime trainer, John Mazza. “He’s training good, he’s ready.”
Owens is hoping Great Navigator can emulate his namesake. The 1990 model was a precocious Kentucky-bred who won three other stakes from 13 overall starts for Mazza and the Roron Stable of Ron and Rosemarie Shockley. The 2020 model is a New Jersey-bred who also came out running, winning by 5 3/4 lengths on debut in June at Monmouth.
Great Navigator is listed at 4-1 on the Gulfstream morning line for his comeback in a seven-furlong race that has Gold Magic (post 2, Emma-Jayne Wilson) as a 2-1 program choice. A field of eight also includes Ticking, Street Swagg, and Diamond Cool as viable contenders.
The nominal feature is part of a 20-cent Rainbow 6 (races 4-9) that began the week with a $180,278 carryover jackpot. First post is 12:40 p.m. Eastern. Sunshine and mid-70s highs are in the Thursday forecast.
Art Collector to New Orleans
Art Collector, whose victory in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup has made him the No. 1-ranked horse in the NTRA Top Thoroughbred Poll every week since then, will make his next start in the Grade 2, $500,000 New Orleans Classic on the big Louisiana Derby card March 25 at Fair Grounds, said owner-breeder Bruce Lunsford.
Art Collector has been on a steady work pattern for Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott at Payson Park since earning a 107 Beyer in his 4 1/4-length upset of the Jan. 28 Pegasus. The most recent of four breezes came Sunday when the 6-year-old horse went five furlongs in 1:01.40 over a fast track.
“Bill keeps telling me how great the horse is doing,” Lunsford said of the $4 million earner.
Both the Pegasus and New Orleans Classic are 1 1/8-mile races for older horses. Entries for the Louisiana Derby card will be drawn Saturday.
Pletcher with a newbie
Frosty O’Toole, a 3 1/2-length winner of a two-turn allowance Wednesday at Tampa Bay Downs with an 80 Beyer, has been privately purchased by Eclipse Thoroughbreds and turned over to Todd Pletcher. The 3-year-old Frosted filly is a half-sister to two ungraded stakes winners.
Eclipse founder Aron Wellman said Frosty O’Toole arrived Saturday night at the Palm Beach Downs training center. “We hope she’s an Oaks filly,” said Wellman.
Frosty O’Toole had been owned and trained for her first four starts by Mike Dini. “She’s a big, good-looking filly with lots of upside,” said Dini. “I wish them all the best.”
Sprint stakes upcoming
A pair of $100,000 sprint stakes, the Hutcheson and Silks Run, will serve as highlights of the coming weekend at Gulfstream when run some 90 minutes apart on a 12-race Saturday card.
Super Chow figures as a huge favorite in the six-furlong Hutcheson (race 8), which drew a field of seven 3-year-olds, while Big Invasion also should attract major tote action as part of a full field of 12 older horses in the Silks Run (race 11) going five furlongs on turf.
A third scheduled stakes, the $100,000 Any Limit for 3-year-old fillies, failed to get a sufficient number of entries.
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