Salute the Colonel cuts back for turf allowance

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Anybody who wants to see Thursday’s $48,000 turf allowance feature at Gulfstream Park better get here early. The one-mile optional claimer, which lured the stakes-placed pair of Salute the Colonel and Uncle B, will be run as the opening event on a 10-race card that will also be highlighted by a carryover of just under $1.1 million in the Rainbow 6.

Salute the Colonel will turn back in distance off a ninth-place finish under Luis Saez in the Grade 2 Pan American at 1 1/2 miles on March 30, an effort trainer Joe Orseno said was much better than it might appear on paper.

“I really think this horse can go three turns, but he’s a hard horse to ride and he just wouldn’t settle for Luis during the early part of the Pan Am,” said Orseno. “He tried to run off with him during the first three-eighths of a mile and Luis almost fell off him at one point. He finally got him to relax after about a half-mile, and turning for home he looped up to them like he might still finish third. But he had exerted so much energy in the first part of the race that the final eighth was too much for him.”

Orseno said he really wanted to try Salute the Colonel back at 1 1/2 miles in a starter allowance race at the end of the month, but was afraid it might not fill.

“I still believe he’ll get the three turns if you can get him to relax, but this race came up, he was eligible because of the date, and it’s only a six-horse field,” he said. So, I decided to turn him back to a mile and try him here.”

Orseno named Jairo Rendon to ride Thursday. “There looks like there is a lot of speed in there, so I’m just hoping he can get him to settle during the first part,”Orseno said.

Uncle B has been away since his fourth-place finish in the Grade 3 Appleton on March 29. Trained by Lilli Kurtinecz, Uncle B won a pair of starter allowance races during the early part of the 2018-19 Championship meet, including the Claiming Crown Emerald at 36-1 against a field that included Salute the Colonel. Uncle B has won five times and twice placed in stakes since he was haltered by Kurtinecz for $16,000 here during the winter of 2018.

Ceevee, claimed for $50,000 by owner-trainer Happy Alter out of a wire-to-wire victory on March 10, looks like the one to catch again in a lineup that also includes Take Command, Basha, and Cheyenne’s Colonel.

Cookie Dough gets her shot

Trainer Stanley Gold was frustrated when unable to get Cookie Dough into the starting lineup for the Kentucky Oaks. She wound up the first also-eligible for the Grade 1 test for 3-year-old fillies earlier this month at Churchill Downs. But she will get her chance in the national spotlight when part of a nine-horse field drawn Sunday for Pimlico’s Black-Eyed Susan.

Cookie Dough departed her Gulfstream Park headquarters for Maryland on Sunday, although Gold will stay home to watch the race from the comfort of his home on Friday.

“It was frustrating not being able to run in the Oaks, and my thought watching the race was that we’d have probably been right on Serengeti’s tail and she wouldn’t have had such an easy time of it,” said Gold, referring to Serengeti Empress, who went wire to wire to upset the Oaks. “The winner ran big, but I wish we had been given the chance to be in there, though. I’m sure this won’t be an easy race either, but it’s a speed-favoring track and I’m just glad to be part of it this time. I just hope she takes to the track. If she does, I think we’re live.”

Cookie Dough, runaway winner of the final two legs of the 2018 Florida Sire Series here last year, has made just two starts at 3, finishing second in the Grade 2 Davona Dale and third in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Oaks after leading into the stretch in both races. She has worked three times since the Oaks, including a mile in 1:38.60 here on May 5.