Red-hot Valente sends Doyouknowsomething to Jazil

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The holiday season may be over, but owner Roddy Valente hopes his reasons for celebrating are not.

In the last five weeks, Valente has won six races at three different tracks and was a nose away from winning a seventh race last Friday at Aqueduct.

“They let me back in the game,” Valente kidded on Monday. “It feels good to be back.”

Valente hopes the good tidings continue Saturday when he sends out Doyouknowsomething in the $125,000 Jazil Stakes at Aqueduct.

Doyouknowsomething, a 5-year-old gelding trained by A.C. Avila, started Valente’s successful run, winning a high-class allowance/optional-claiming race on Dec. 9 and earning a Beyer Speed Figure of 102. In that race, run over a speed-favoring track, Doyouknowsomething went gate to wire and held off Send It In, who came back to win the Alex M. Robb Handicap for New York-breds.

Valente claimed Doyouknowsomething for $16,000 in the summer of 2015. Doyouknowsomething has won five races from 16 starts and earned just over $250,000 since the claim.

“Any time you claim one for $16,000 and they go on to win all their conditions, it can’t be anything but good,” Valente said. “He ran a big number last time, and I know it was a speed-biased track.

“We got nowhere else to run, we might as well test the waters.”

Entries for the Jazil are to be taken Wednesday. Others pointing to the race include Royal Posse, Res Judicata, Grasshoppin, Voluntario, and Sunny Ridge.

In addition to Doyouknowsomething with Avila, Valente has won three races in New York with trainer Bruce Levine and races at Charles Town and Laurel with Ollie Figgins over the last few weeks. All three victories with Levine came with progeny of Bustin Stones, a Grade 1 winner campaigned by Valente who stands stud at Waldorf Farm in North Chatham, N.Y.

One of those horses was Stretch’s Stone, who won a six-furlong maiden race for New York-breds by 8 1/4 lengths on Dec. 18, earning an 84 Beyer. Stretch’s Stone, named in honor of Valente’s father, who was nicknamed Stretch, is being pointed to the Grade 3, $250,000 Withers Stakes on Feb. 4 at Aqueduct.

“We’re going to give him a chance to go two turns,” Valente said. “Bruce said he wants to go longer.”

More Stones and Dr. Stone, both maiden winners in their last start, were entered for a New York-bred allowance/optional $75,000 claimer that was lost when Sunday’s card was canceled due to cold temperatures. The race is expected to be brought back for Saturday.

The Jazil Stakes lost a possible entrant when the comebacking Page McKenney missed a weekend workout because of the weather. Page McKenney is likely to point to the $75,000 Native Dancer on Jan. 21 at Laurel instead, trainer Mary Eppler said.

“I’m not going to make it,” Eppler said Monday. “I was going to work him this weekend, and that didn’t happen. The track wasn’t good enough. Looks like I’ll be pointing to the following week at Laurel.”

Page McKenney won last year’s Native Dancer before taking the Grade 3 General George. He has not raced since finishing second in the Charles Town Classic last April 23.

Page McKenney was scratched from the Pimlico Special on the morning of the May 20 race with minor filling in a tendon.