Speed Boat Beach searches for form of old in yet another comeback

ARCADIA, Calif. – Seeing that favorites are winning at a 46 percent clip this winter at Santa Anita, perhaps bettors should back the obvious Friday in the featured fifth race on the hillside turf course.

However, that means wagering on a Grade 1 winner who finished up the track his last three starts, is racing on turf for the first time in more than three years, and making his first start in nearly four months.

Yes, Speed Boat Beach has questions to answer in a classified turf sprint. If trainer Bob Baffert is right, Speed Boat Beach will win the allowance and reemerge as a top sprinter. But it is easy to be skeptical. After he won the Grade 1 Malibu Stakes in late 2023, Speed Boat Beach missed all of 2024, and misfired in all three 2025 starts.

“A lot of it’s mental with him,” Baffert said. “He’s doing well, he’s got back class, his head seems to be in a good spot.”

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Notwithstanding subpar efforts last year, Speed Boat Beach appears the most likely winner in Friday’s hillside race with only one other true front-runner, comebacker Vlahos. St Anthony and Son of a Birch will rally late. Nesso’s Lastharrah and Gran Oriente also are entered.

Speed Boat Beach is the 5-2 program favorite while racing in an easier spot than he did all of last year. He bled in his spring comeback in a Churchill Downs stakes, was compromised by a pace duel in a summer comeback in Grade 2 Pat O’Brien Stakes at Del Mar, then pressed and faded in the Grade 2 Santa Anita Sprint Championship in September.

“It’s tough to find a race for him, I threw him into the deep end,” Baffert said.

In hindsight, the races in 2025 were too tough. “I gave him some time off, let him get his mind right,” Baffert said. “He worked well the other day.”

Speed Boat Beach, a 6-year-old, adds Lasix for the first time Friday and will be ridden by Juan Hernandez. Assuming he avoids a duel with Vlahos, Speed Boat Beach can win the 6 1/2-furlong race.

“I would have preferred six furlongs, but there was nothing,” Baffert said. “It’s hard to get in here, but he worked well the other day, and he ran well on the grass earlier [as 2-year-old].”

Speed Boat Beach won two turf stakes as a juvenile, and though his career has been repeatedly interrupted by minor issues, he enters Friday having won four races and $504,850 from 10 starts.

To win Friday, Speed Boat Beach must put away Vlahos and hold off rallies by route-to-sprint veterans St Anthony and Son of a Birch. Gran Oriente, a Group 1 winner in Chile, shortens to a sprint after a better-than-looked last-place finish in a second-level allowance route. Gran Oriente was four-wide throughout, and gave way on the far turn. He adds blinkers Friday.

Turf-sprint favorites this winter have won 12 of 26 (46 percent) and produced a flat-bet profit, which matches the 46 pecent win rate by all favorites. Betting every Santa Anita favorite this winter would have produced a $2.21 return for each $2 win bet.

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