Rojo Road has bunch of bullets

ALBANY, Calif. - Six 2-year-old maiden fillies, four making their debuts, will meet at five furlongs in the best race on Friday's Golden Gate Fields card.

Exhortation, a $100,000 Keeneland purchase last September and a half-sister to multiple Grade 1 winner Toccet, drew the outside post and probably will draw a great deal of interest at the mutuel windows.

Rojo Road has been working very rapidly for her debut, including four works over Golden Gate's new synthetic Tapeta surface. Mackee's Lady and Brahms Babe will also be making their first starts.

The two experienced runners are both shippers. Haint's Deal ran third and then seventh in two starts at Mountaineer. Doalittleraindance was a runner-up in her debut at Fairplex before running last in her next start, which came at Santa Anita's Oak Tree meeting.

Three of Exhortation's five siblings from the stakes-placed Cozzene's Angel are winners. Pulpit, her sire, is good with first-time 2-year-olds, who win at a better-than-15 percent clip in their debuts. Exhortation has worked steadily for trainer Jerry Hollendorfer, missing only one work since her first recorded drill on July 25.

While bettors may be attracted to her breeding, she may be better when she gets to run longer.

Rojo Road has unleashed a series of fast works at both Emerald Downs and Golden Gate for trainer Jim Penney, whose daughter Kay Cooper handles his runners here. Rojo Road shows a five-furlong work in 58.40 here on Oct. 22, one of three five-furlong bullets on her resume. And she has worked six furlongs twice.

By Cahill Road, who has a success rate of better than 10 percent with juvenile first-timers, she is out of Amocat, whose lone career victory came in a stakes. The barn wins 21 percent with first-timers.

"We do a lot of two-minute licks," Cooper said. "We want them fitter than what we're asking them to run. It's not fair to ask them to run six furlongs if they've only worked five-eighths.

"She's worked very fast, but she's done it entirely on her own. I don't like to work them fast. She's a very hot horse, and it might take her a race to figure things out."