Soul Driver narrowly prevails in Oceanside

DEL MAR, Calif. – Bad trips cost Soul Driver in his races earlier this year. Good trips have helped him in his last two starts, never more so than opening day Thursday at Del Mar, when jockey Mike Smith extricated him from a potentially difficult spot heading to the far turn, and guided him to a narrow victory over a stubborn Forest Blue in the $116,000 Oceanside Stakes for 3-year-old grass runners.

Soul Driver ($7.80), the second choice, beat Forest Blue by a nose, with Royal Albert Hall another 3 1/2 lengths back in third. Papacoolpapacool, the 6-5 favorite, wound up fifth, with Tried and True finishing fourth after a brutal trip, the kind Soul Driver was able to avoid.

Soul Driver completed one mile on firm turf in 1:35.86.

Soul Driver’s trainer, Jeff Mullins, thinks better days could be ahead.

“I think so. I think he’ll run all day,” Mullins said. “He broke his maiden going a mile an eighth.”

Tellingly, that’s the distance of the Grade 2, $250,000 Del Mar Derby, the championship race of the meet for the division on Sept. 6. Whether Soul Driver has another start before then, like in the Grade 3, $150,000 La Jolla Handicap on Aug. 9, is to be determined.

Soul Driver won the Singletary Stakes at Santa Anita on June 20 in his prior start, his first in three months. That ended a five-race losing streak.

“Up until his last two races, he’d had some terrible trips,” said Mullins, who said the three-month gap in racing was necessitated by a quarter crack. “He’s over that, and the little break helped, too,” he said.

Soul Driver, a son of Street Boss, is owned by the Bloom Racing Stable partnership of Jeff Bloom, whose stable is slowly growing into one of the more prominent ownership groups on the West Coast. Just days before this race, Sol Kumin, a co-owner of Lady Eli, purchased a minority interest in Soul Driver.