As Triple Crown season draws to a close with next weekend’s Belmont Stakes, a debate continues to rage within the sport about whether the three jewels – currently run within a five-week timespan – should be spaced out further. Jorge Rosales, last year’s winningest trainer at Emerald Downs, would scoff at such chatter. It is not uncommon for “Run ’em Back Rosales” to give his horses just six or seven days between races, a scenario in which he’s won at a rather stunning 36 percent rate. “I get on my own horses, so if they feel good and happy, we just enter them right back,” he says. Two of the horses Rosales has entered in Sunday’s co-features at Emerald, Great Runner and Bobby’s Genie, have already won coming back eight days after their previous races at the current Emerald meet. Six-year-old Bobby’s Genie is set to make her third start of the meet, which only began May 2, in race 1 Sunday, while 7-year-old Great Runner is set to make his fourth start of the meet in the one-mile race 8 – just six days after getting beaten by a head in a six-furlong claiming race. “It kind of hassles him a little bit going short,” said Rosales. “Since he came back good, I made the decision to put him in a mile and see how it works out.” :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. Rosales conceded “it was a tough decision” to enter Great Runner, a son of Gun Runner, in this spot, but he “was trying to make the race go” for his other entrant, Light the Beam, who has been off since an atypically lackluster performance in a grass route at Turf Paradise in November. “We turned him out because we ran him once in Arizona and the owners decided to give him time off if he didn’t run good,” explained Rosales. Light the Beam, like his stablemates, has won at Emerald with just eight days between races, with that victory coming in a one-mile claiming race last year for trainer Julie Hebdon. He followed that win up with another one 15 days later and was promptly claimed by Rosales. Rosales’s veteran geldings look to be the class of a six-horse field, and both have tactical speed to put themselves anywhere they need to be. Not so with Bobby’s Genie, whose strategy is simple: Go to the lead and hope not to tire. That could be a problem in Sunday’s first race, a six-furlong starter allowance with a $14,000 purse, as Bobby’s Genie, who has eight career wins, is 0 for 10 at the distance. “I’m a little bit worried about the distance, but she’s training good,” said Rosales. “She should be all right, but the distance is a little bit tricky in there.” Other contenders in the well-matched field of five include fellow front-runner Clubhouse Drama, whose last-out Beyer Speed Figure of 71 is a point better than Bobby’s Genie’s; and Princess Hekawi, who is 3 for 4 at Emerald in her career and hails form the barn of top trainer Tim McCanna. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.