Smokem Kitten headed to Kentucky after Miami Mile victory

Smokem Kitten is headed to Kentucky this week after winning last Saturday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Miami Mile at Gulfstream Park.

“Don’t have any set plans for him yet,” said trainer Mike Maker, who added that the Wise Dan Stakes was a possibility.

The Wise Dan Stakes, formerly called the Firecracker, is a Grade 2, $200,000 turf race over 1 1/16 miles scheduled for June 18 at Churchill.

Smokem Kitten, a Ken and Sarah Ramsey homebred who has raced exclusively on turf, won his career debut in December 2014, finished sixth in the Dania Beach Stakes the next month, and then didn’t race for more than a year after suffering a suspensory-ligament injury, according to Maker. He finished seventh in his comeback race in February when failing to settle after being taken off the pace.

Maker decided to remove Smokem Kitten’s blinkers, and Smokem Kitten responded with a blowout win in a first-level allowance, setting a 7 1/2-furlong course record of 1:26.78. He followed that up with a front-running victory Saturday, beating the solid Grade 3-class Middleburg by a head and earning a career-best 98 Beyer Speed Figure.

“He always showed us talent,” Maker said. “He settled down a lot after we took the blinkers off.”

New setup working for Werner

Trainer Ronny Werner, by his own admission, had fallen on some hard times partway through 2015. Werner, a Texas native, began training in earnest in 1991, and from the mid-1990s until 2010, his career mainly moved forward. Werner’s stable earnings increased year by year, and between 2001 and 2010, he won 15 graded stakes. But 2010 was the last year Werner notched a graded win, and his situation gradually eroded – in 2014, he went just 12 for 122, and in 2015, he was 9 for 114.

“I had some bad horses, and it showed in the percentages,” Werner said last weekend. “It’s not fun getting kicked on all the time.”

But last November, Werner was hired as the private trainer for Alan Cohen’s Arindel Farm, and so far, the new position has revived Werner’s fortunes. Already in 2016, from just 38 starters he has nine winners, equaling his 2015 total, and there should be plenty more to come. Werner was training off the farm at Arindel over the winter, shipping into the six stalls he had at Gulfstream, but now he has 40 stalls at the track, and Arindel horses have been active participants at the new Gulfstream meet that started April 6.

“Mr. Cohen has 74 mares now, and they have a lot of pedigree,” Werner said. “He bought a lot of horses out of Book 1 and Book 2 at Keeneland. He’s all in, and hopefully he hits.”

Arindel has a lot of grass horses right now, which works well because Gulfstream is carding plenty of turf races. One of them, the 3-year-old filly Pancake, is slated to start Saturday in the $75,000 Honey Ryder. Pancake won the Joseph E. Broussard Memorial three starts ago at Fair Grounds and most recently was a decent fourth in the Sanibel Island Stakes at Gulfstream. Pancake’s future looks bright enough, and now, so does Werner’s.

Turf-sprint feature

There are seven entrants in the featured seventh race Wednesday, but it’s hard to see the winner of this first-level turf-sprint allowance with a $75,000 claiming option coming from beyond the trio of Eila, Ramblin and Gamblin, and Reimburse. Reimburse is the least likely winner among the three, with Eila and Ramblin and Gamblin likely to vie for favoritism.

Ramblin and Gamblin has started her career with two wins, both in turf sprints and both with speed to spare for trainer Jason Servis. Eila has won three of her four races and is 2 for 2 since being claimed by trainer Ralph Nicks for A&K Equine LLC. She easily beat $50,000 starter-allowance rivals in an April 10 turf sprint.