Reconfigure brings sharp recent form to starter handicap

ETOBICOKE, Ontario – Trainers Marty Drexler and Mike De Paulo each had a successful Gulfstream Park Championship meet, and they will send out the two highweights in Saturday’s $50,000 Welcome Back Handicap at Woodbine. The 5 1/2-furlong starter handicap is for 3-year-olds and up on the Tapeta.

Reconfigure was claimed for $20,000 by Drexler for owner Jim Ensom here Nov. 27. The venerable 10-year-old started three times over Gulfstream’s synthetic Tapeta surface, winning a $20,000 claimer while receiving an 89 Beyer Speed Figure on Jan. 21. Reconfigure subsequently rallied wide for second behind Unprecedented in consecutive $25,000 starter allowances, dropping a nose decision with a 92 Beyer on Feb. 26 before a 1 1/2-length loss with an 88 Beyer on March 25.

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Leading jockey Kazushi Kimura will ride Reconfigure, who drew post 9 in the 10-horse field.

“He should be tough in there,” said Drexler, who won 11 races over the winter in his first stint at Gulfstream.

De Paulo saddles Souper Success, who took the Woodstock Stakes here in his 2019 season debut and was close second in his 2020 opener in a second-level allowance. The 6-year-old was mired in a slump before beating $20,000 claimers on Nov. 12. He has been idle since a front-running second for $40,000 on Dec. 3, when he got an 84 Beyer, the second highest of his career.

“He runs pretty good fresh,” De Paulo said. “He’s been training good. He finished [2021] really well. We had a little issue with him that we straightened out. The day he won for $20,000, he was like a different horse, and then he came back and ran good for $40,000. He’s a nice little horse.”

Souper Success has been pegged at 123 pounds by racing secretary Scott Lane. Reconfigure is the 124-pound highweight.

“He’s got to beat Reconfigure,” said De Paulo, who won four races at Gulfstream. “He’s only getting a pound from him. [Reconfigure] is a dead-fit horse.”

Gary Boulanger has the mount on Souper Success from post 5.

Carded as race 6, the race is for horses that started for a claiming price of no more than $20,000 in 2021-22 and made at least one start at Woodbine last year.

Maximus Momentus improved dramatically last fall and could be rolling late into the exotics. He beat $40,000 nonwinners-of-three opposition the last time he went postward Dec. 5.

◗ A field of seven was drawn for Saturday’s seventh race, a second-level allowance for fillies and mares that includes the Drexler charges Dancing Doll and Millennium Force.

Trainer Mark Casse sends out Dirty Dangle and Roman d’Oro in the five-furlong dash.

Dirty Dangle was a front-running seventh behind fourth-place finisher Millennium Force in a second-level allowance at Gulfstream when they both came off a layoff March 10.

Post time for the first of nine races on Saturday is 1:10 p.m.