Secret Chat looks to build on eventful debut win in Aventura Stakes
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HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – From a visual standpoint, there probably hasn’t been a more impressive 2-year-old maiden winner here this season than Secret Chat, who overcame a very poor start to capture his debut by seven lengths on Aug. 19.
Whether he can break better and ultimately repeat or improve on that effort will be the key questions when Secret Chat returns against five other promising juveniles in Sunday’s main event at Gulfstream Park, the $65,000 Aventura Stakes, to be decided at one mile on the main track.
Secret Chat not only walked out of the gate in his lone start, he took a ton of dirt behind the early leaders after recovering to gain striking position on the turn. He then tipped wide, out near the center of the course, to continue his bid turning for home before widening his advantage with every stride in the final furlong. He completed 6 1/2 furlongs in 1:18.03, earning a relatively strong 76 Beyer Speed Figure.
“I thought he might not break well since he’d always kind of hesitated at the gate in the morning and he had the one hole,” said Roderick Rodriguez, who trains the homebred son of Union Rags for Gelfenstein Farms LLC. “I felt better after seeing him accelerate and get good position, but he still got stopped a couple of times down near the inside and had to come pretty wide. All in all, he got a pretty good schooling and I thought the way he won was very impressive.”
Rodriguez said he hasn’t done too much with Secret Chat since the race, although he did take him back to the gate for a little schooling work, a slow three furlongs in 39.80 seconds, on Sept. 15 at Palm Meadows.
“He was obviously very fit for his first start, so I didn’t need to do much with him for this race,” Rodriguez said. “I just let him break, then go nice and easy from the gate, and hopefully, he will be better the second time. The one thing I’m sure of, his breeding says he can get a mile. There is no question about that. I think that’s what he really wants.”
Secret Chat is one of three debut winners in the Aventura lineup along with Self Sufficient and Brawn. Self Sufficient, a $260,000 yearling purchase by owner Mike Repole at the Keeneland September 2022 yearling sale, rallied to a very professional 2 1/2-length victory when launching his career at six furlongs here Aug. 20 and is another who should handle the added ground, being by Grade 1 Woodward winner Preservationist out of a Union Rags mare.
Divieto is one of only two members of the field with stakes experience, along with Jive, having finishing a wide-running fifth behind local division leader Bentornato in the Proud Man Stakes on Aug. 12 while returning on relatively short rest after winning his maiden in impressive fashion by 4 1/2 lengths just three weeks earlier.
Jive rallied to finish a distant third behind Bentornato in the Dr. Fager Stakes, the opening leg of the Florida Sire Stakes, on Sept. 9 after having been a non-threatening seventh in the Grade 3 Sanford at Saratoga earlier in the summer.
◗ Dean Delivers, who finished third behind sprint kingpins Elite Power and Gunite in the Grade 1 Vanderbilt on July 29 at Saratoga, had his first serious work since that outing, breezing four furlongs in 48.78, getting his final quarter in a sharp 23.23, here Friday. Trainer Michael Yates said earlier this week he had nothing picked out for Dean Delivers’s next start.
◗ Poeima, who ran away to a popular and very easy overnight handicap victory on Sept. 10, also returned to the tab Friday going an easy half-mile of her own in 48.20. Poeima is among the invitees for the Grade 3 Princess Rooney on Oct. 7.
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