Schettino maidens worth a look
There’s a lot going on during the nine-race card at Belmont Park on Friday, which includes two competitive second-level optional races, plus a $50,000 starter race in which trainer Wesley Ward has given the mount on the favorite to 48-year-old David Flores, a winner of 3,500 races who now works for him.
The early portion of the card includes a 5 1/2-furlong maiden race for 2-year-olds. Trainer Dominick Schettino, the Brooklyn Boyz Stables of Anthony Bonomo, and the MeB Stables of Bonomo’s wife, Mary Ellen, have an entry comprising two $350,000 Keeneland yearling purchases who each makes his first start.
Always Dreaming is out of the first crop of Bodemeister, the winner of the 2012 Arkansas Derby and the runner-up in that year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Fillet of Sole is out of the first crop of Belmont Stakes, Fountain of Youth, and Champagne winner Union Rags.
Schettino won last year’s Grade 1 Champagne for the Bonomos and St. Elias Stable with Greenpointcrusader and has an above-average record with 2-year-olds in general.
According to DRF Formulator, during the past five years, Schettino is 13 for 80 (16 percent) with 2-year-olds making their first starts and has a healthy ROI of $2.37. During the same time period, all of his juvenile starters are 33 for 207 (16 percent), and he has an ROI of $2.10.
“You have to get them physically and mentally ready,” Schettino said. “But it doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes you get them physically ready, but they’re not there mentally. Sometimes it’s the other way around.”
According to Schettino, Always Dreaming definitely will start Friday. He is considering another race for Fillet of Sole.
“There is a race on the 9th that is a little further,” he said. “It’s six furlongs. The longer, the better for him, I think.”
Schettino is pleased with how Always Dreaming has trained.
“Everything we have asked him to do he has done right,” Schettino said. “He has shown speed, and physically and mentally, he’s there.”
The Ortiz brothers are named to ride – Irad on Always Dreaming and Jose on Fillet of Sole.
◗ Flores, formerly a leading rider at Santa Anita, Del Mar, and Fairplex, was scheduled to have his first mount since last September on Thursday at Belmont. He spent the winter in Ocala, Fla., with Becky Thomas’s Sequel Bloodstock, learning about yearlings and pinhooking, before going to work for Ward in Kentucky.
“He’s been galloping and breezing horses just like a jockey would do and learning more from a standpoint of an assistant trainer,” Ward said. “Maybe not in as much detail, but he’s learning about buying yearlings and pinhooking horses. He’s shown an interest in riding some races on the horses he’s been breezing and galloping. He’s very light, and the talent is still there.”
Flores’s Friday mount, Lamontagne, finished second in a first-level allowance turf sprint at Pimlico last out. He’ll have to deal with the Brian Lynch-trained Tizanillusion in this six-furlong grass race.
Tizanillusion won a $35,000 maiden-claiming race at Gulfstream Park in February. He has since finished second in a $50,000 starter race at Gulfstream and in the $61,000 Crank It Up Stakes at Monmouth Park. The 3-5 Crank It Up winner, Brandy’s Girl, is 4 for 7 and has shown a lot of promise for owner-trainer-breeder Eddie Broome.