R Free Roll looking for clean break in Hollywood Beach
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Considering that she has been one of the fleetest fillies stabled in south Florida over the past two winters, it’s hard to fathom that R Free Roll has never won a race over the usually speed-biased Gulfstream Park strip. But that somewhat surprising, negative statistic might change Saturday, when R Free Roll tries to show her heels to nine other fillies and mares in the $75,000 Hollywood Beach overnight stakes.
R Free Roll has been blanked in five career starts at Gulfstream, although she did finish second in three of those races, including the Grade 3 Sugar Swirl and a tough statebred open allowance during the 2013-14 championship meet that ended last week. Part of R Free Roll’s problem, at least of late, has been an inability to break alertly from the gate.
Slow starts kept her from ever making the lead in both the Sunshine Millions Filly and Mare Sprint and the Awesome Feather this winter. R Free Roll did leave cleanly in her last start but found seven furlongs to be just a little beyond her range, as she lost a long early lead and dropped a three-quarter-length decision to the late-running Toasting.
Pixie Devil has not been headed early in each of her last three starts for trainer Marty Wolfson. But her speed is one-mile speed, so she figures to be chasing R Free Roll during the early stages of the Hollywood Beach. Pixie Devil finished very well into the teeth of a pretty strong headwind in her latest work this week and may stand a good chance of running down the leader on the turn back to six furlongs.
Lil Red Cozette also looks like a major player despite stepping up into stakes company for the first time. The lightly raced but improving daughter of Henny Hughes has won each of her last three starts on dirt, including a second-level optional-claiming race going 6 1/2 furlongs March 7 for which she earned a career-best 88 Beyer Speed Figure.
Vuitton is perhaps the biggest question mark in the race, making her first start since finishing a distant second in Churchill Downs’s Dream Supreme Stakes on Nov. 1. Vuitton, who has finished worse than third but once in 16 career starts, all with trainer Steve Asmussen, was transferred to Eddie Kenneally’s barn at the end of her 2013 campaign and has trained steadily for her return at Palm Meadows, where she worked a bullet half-mile March 29.
Trainer Allen Jerkens has freshened Classic Point a bit in hopes of getting her back to her best form following disappointing efforts in the Sugar Swirl and Sunshine Millions Filly and Mare Sprint. Classic Point came within a neck of upsetting Dance to Bristol when finishing second after setting the pace in the Grade 2 Honorable Miss last summer at Saratoga.