Runaway Ghost eyeing Sunland Park Handicap

Runaway Ghost won Sunland Park’s richest race for 3-year-olds last meet, and this season could go after the track’s richest race for older horses. Trainer Todd Fincher said Tuesday that the $150,000 Sunland Park Handicap on May 4 is a consideration for Runaway Ghost following his Sunday win in the track’s $75,000 Curribot Stakes.

Runaway Ghost reached a career pinnacle last year when he won the Grade 3, $800,000 Sunland Derby. An injury kept him from advancing to the Kentucky Derby, and on Feb. 2 he returned from a 10-month layoff and won the six-furlong Fort Bliss at Sunland.

Fincher planned to skip the Curribot, but Runaway Ghost was training so sharply he entered the horse. Runaway Ghost tracked the pace in the 1 1/16-mile race and went on to a 1 1/2-length win over American Dubai. Runaway Ghost earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 92.

“He ran awesome stretching out that much further off a 10-month layoff and one hard race,” Fincher said. “The horse he ran down had been a nice horse in the past and it looked like he came back to form. I’m proud of him.”

Fincher said that Runaway Ghost, a five-time stakes winner, appears to have come out of the Curribot in good order and that he and owner-breeder Joe Peacock will formulate plans for him.

“I won’t be running him in three weeks or less,” Fincher said, alluding to the quick turnaround into the Curribot. “We’ll work him again and start looking for a place to go. We could stay here, run one more time. It’s a nice race, a good purse.

“We’ve got a little time to figure out what we’re going to do.”

The Sunland Derby and Sunland Handicap are both run at 1 1/8 miles.

Options for Cowgirls Like Us

Trainer Bret Calhoun has a target race for Cowgirls Like Us, but what she does between now and the June 1 running of the $65,000 Got Koko division of the Texas Stallion Stakes at Lone Star Park is to be determined, he said Tuesday.

Cowgirls Like Us won the fourth stakes race of her career in Saturday night’s $65,000 Two Altazano division of the Texas Stallion Stakes at Sam Houston. She’s not eligible for the track’s Texas Champions Day program later this month, said Calhoun, noting she was bred in Kentucky.

“There’s a pretty good gap between where we are now and the races at Lone Star,” Calhoun said. “We’re trying to find the best spot for her going two turns somewhere. We thought about the Sunland Park Oaks. We’ll see how that comes up.”

The $200,000 Sunland Park Oaks is March 24.

Calhoun said that aside from the Got Koko at Lone Star, there are a few other races at that meet that fit Cowgirls Like Us. He said plans are being discussed with owner Doug Scharbauer and his adviser, Ken Carson.

Cowgirls Like Us has won a pair of two-turn stakes against open company, and in January stumbled badly twice when fifth in the $147,000 Silverbulletday at Fair Grounds, said Calhoun.