Puhich poised for a big Saturday

AUBURN, Wash. – Mike Puhich could be sitting on a gold mine Saturday at Emerald Downs. The trainer will send out a pair of promising first-time starters in the day’s second race, and then follow up with Carving, a former Kentucky Derby hopeful, in the featured eighth race, a $50,000 claimer at one mile.

The Puhich-trained 2-year-olds are Legion of Boom and Wine At Nine, a pair of high-priced yearlings with win-now pedigrees. Legion of Boom, a Seahawks-themed colt by Harbor the Gold, should be particularly popular in the betting. He’s a full brother to both Del Rio Harbor, Emerald’s champion 2-year-old in 2013, and Couldabenthewhisky, hero of the 2010 Gottstein Futurity. Puhich thinks he has a chance to be a good one.

“He was real immature mentally for a while, but in the last month everything has been hitting on all cylinders,” Puhich said. “He’s going to be a better horse after he runs. He’s going to run really well, don’t get me wrong, but I think a race is going to do him wonders. The light bulb has really gone off.”

Mark Dedomenico and Glen Todd paid $70,000 for Legion of Boom at the 2013 Washington Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Associations yearling and mixed sale. Dedomenico also owns Wine At Nine, a Divine Park colt acquired last September at Keeneland for $115,000.

“This horse acts like he wants to run a mile and a quarter,” Puhich said of Wine At Nine. “He acts like he’s going to be way better around two turns. He keeps up with everybody in his works, but he doesn’t blast off like a quick horse. It may go just the opposite, but I fully expect Legion of Boom out near the lead, with this guy farther back.”

In the eighth race, Carving will make his first start since shipping in from Arlington Park, where he finished fifth and seventh in a pair of optional claimers. Carving finished third in the Auburn Handicap at Emerald Downs last June before his 3-year-old year was cut short by injury. He began his career with Bob Baffert in Southern California and won the Real Quiet Stakes at Hollywood Park in November 2012.

“It was one of my brilliant ideas to send him back to deeper, softer tracks,” Puhich said of Carving’s side trip to Illinois. “He never ran his race – he never ran a jump – which was a real disappointment. So we brought him back home and got him fresh, and he’s training like a house afire. I don’t know what to expect, but everybody at the farm thinks he’s going to run a corker.”