Royale figures one to catch in marathon feature

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Christophe Clement is in Florida for a 31st straight winter, perhaps with a little more pep to his step. It’s the first year he can say to anyone within shouting distance at his Payson Park base that he’s a Breeders’ Cup-winning trainer, although it’d be highly uncharacteristic for him to even whisper it without prompting.

While quietly savoring the last-to-first run by Pizza Bianca in the Nov. 5 Juvenile Fillies Turf at Del Mar – the first Breeders’ Cup triumph for Clement after 41 defeats – the 56-year-old Frenchman is going about his business as usual in the tranquil environs of Payson while regrouping his stable for another productive year.

Since 1992, when he ventured south from New York after first getting started at Belmont Park the previous fall, Clement has made a habit of slowly building momentum as a year unfolds. During this relatively slow period, he’ll send out the occasional starter at Gulfstream Park, which is just what he’ll do Sunday when Royale returns from a layoff of more than eight months in the lone allowance of a 10-race card.

The $61,000, first-level race drew a field of eight older horses when scheduled for 1 1/2 miles on turf, although a 70 percent chance of rain in the local forecast Sunday might force it to the Tapeta course.

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Either way, Royale appears eager to get started on his year. When last seen by the racing public, the 5-year-old Kentucky-bred gelding was going wire to wire in a 1 3/8-mile maiden race in early May on the Belmont turf, and after five timed workouts at Payson since late November, he may take some catching when leaving from post 7 under Emisael Jaramillo.

Royale “just needed some time,” Clement said. “He’s training fine and is an okay horse. There are maybe four horses in there that look as good as him, so it’s a tougher spot than we expected. But yes he is training very well coming into this.”

Gloucestershire (post 2, Javier Castellano) looks like the main rival Royale will be asked to hold off. Trained by Todd Pletcher, Gloucestershire will be trying to improve off his North American debut nine Sundays ago at Aqueduct, where he was a decent third in a similar spot.

Thursday at Gulfstream, Pletcher was the winning trainer for this same sort of first-level race for fillies and mares when Mezcal ($3.40) led throughout under Castellano in a 1 1/2-mile Tapeta race originally scheduled for the grass. In fact, because of intermittent rain in the area for much of this week, the turf was not used Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday.

The nominal Sunday feature goes as the ninth race on a card that starts at 12:30 p.m. Eastern. It’s part of the 20-cent Rainbow 6 (races 5-10) that had its jackpot emptied Thursday for the third time in five racing days when a solo winning ticket was cashed for $159,442.

After Sunday, Gulfstream goes dark for two days before another five-day week begins Wednesday. The highlights for next weekend are the $75,000 Sunshine Turf and $75,000 Sunshine Filly and Mare Turf on Saturday. The $3 million Pegasus World Cup program is set for Jan. 29.