Sea Coast, Heath clash in Pini Memorial
A six-day racing season in a jurisdiction where racing has all but ceased carries a hint of the surreal, but there is nothing bizarre about the featured Steve Pini Memorial Stakes on Saturday at Suffolk Downs in East Boston, Mass. The $75,000 Pini, a filly-and-mare turf stakes restricted to horses who haven’t won a graded race in 2016, drew a legitimately strong field of 11 and is a playable race.
The Pini headlines an 11-race card Saturday, with 10 more races to be run Sunday, the last of six racing days during 2016 at Suffolk. Once a fixture on the thriving New England circuit, Suffolk, along with racing in New England, nearly has disappeared. A mini-season was arranged for 2016 to keep one strand of racing alive while Massachusetts horsemen explore the chance of opening a new venue at some future date.
As for the Pini, Sea Coast could be the right horse. The 5-year-old mare was imported from Ireland after a 2014 campaign, had an interrupted 2015 season while racing for trainer Christophe Clement, and has shown strong positive signs in three starts this year.
Sea Coast was only so-so when making her seasonal debut at Gulfstream Park in January, but she won a Monmouth Park allowance race May 28 and was a better-than-it-looked second to the classy Isabella Sings in the Grade 3 Eatontown there June 25.
Sea Coast had to sit and suffer while trapped behind horses as Isabella Sings sprinted for the wire turning for home in the Eatontown, and she finished strongly for second once clear.
Sea Coast seemed poised for a breakthrough July 31 in the Matchmaker at Monmouth but failed to muster the same sort of finish, checking in a well-beaten sixth. The culprit there might have been a wet turf course, but sunny skies were forecast for Friday and Saturday at Suffolk, and a firm course might be all Sea Coast needs to win.
Heath, trained by Bill Mott, is the 5-2 morning-line favorite, but while she finished in front of Sea Coast in the Matchmaker, Sea Coast’s Eatontown was more impressive than anything Heath has recently put forth. Cali Thirty Seven looks like a front-running threat but probably at odds considerably lower than her 15-1 morning line.
Saturday’s opener is the $75,000 Dr. John Kirby for Massachusetts-bred dirt-route horses, of which there are at least six – those entered in the race. Dr. Blarney is listed at 6-5 on the morning line, but he is the king of Massachusetts-bred older horses and is certain to be a red-hot favorite. Dr. Blarney, since moving into restricted stakes competition, has won four in a row by more than 53 combined lengths, and barring the unforeseen, he will run extend his streak Saturday.
Sunday’s feature, also for statebreds, is the $75,000 Thomas F. Moran over a route of ground on grass.