Self Made Man seeks back-to-back wins

The core players in a race run four weeks ago at Turfway Park will reconvene Saturday in the $50,000 Tejano Run Stakes at the Florence, Ky., track.

Self Made Man, the winner of the Dust Commander Stakes on Feb. 16 at 11-1, will be gunning for a repeat when facing two notable rivals from that race, High Blues and Jade's Revenge. A field of eight older horses was entered in the Tejano Run, the feature on a 12-race program.

Self Made Man, bred and owned by Ken and Sarah Ramsey and trained by Mike Maker, led all the way against nine rivals in the one-mile Dust Commander. The Tejano Run, the last two-turn stakes for older horses at the winter-spring meet, is run at 1 1/8 miles on the Polytrack surface.

Self Made Man has "trained forwardly" since his last race, said Maker. "He's right on schedule. The further the better for this horse," he added, alluding to the slight stretch-out. "I guess that's the same for Graham Motion's horse, too, though. It should be a good race."

Motion trains Jade's Revenge, the defending Tejano Run winner and a multiple stakes winner on Polytrack. The Dust Commander marked the first start in nearly nine months for Jade's Revenge, a Maryland-based 5-year-old who made a mild midrace move before settling for fourth as the 8-5 favorite.

High Blues, a late-running third in the Dust Commander, is another in with a solid chance Saturday. A 5-year-old ridgling, he has done some of his best racing on synthetic surfaces, getting 2 wins and 4 thirds from 8 starts.

The others in the Tejano Run are Tap Dancing Mauk, Purely Wild, Bacetto, Bond Street, and Solo Cat. Among them, the Bobby Radcliffe-trained Purely Wild perhaps rates the best longshot chance.

The Tejano Run is named for the 1995 Kentucky Derby runner-up who first made a name for himself by winning the inaugural Kentucky Cup Juvenile at Turfway the previous fall.

* The $50,000 Wintergreen Stakes, which was part of the canceled March 8 card, will not be rescheduled. However, the next two-turn stakes for fillies and mares, the $50,000 Fairway Fun on the Marcho22 Lane's End Stakes undercard, could be run in two divisions in case of an excessive number of entries, according to Turfway officials.