Stablemates Becca's Rocket, Shes Our Fastest dangerous in Treasure Chest Stakes
The stablemates Becca’s Rocket and Shes Our Fastest will bring slightly different running styles into the $100,000 Treasure Chest on Friday at Delta Downs.
Becca’s Rocket could go favored in the one-mile race for fillies and mares off back-to-back allowance victories. She will start from the rail under Timothy Thornton.
“As long as she breaks good, she’ll probably stalk the pace,” said trainer Scott Gelner.
Shes Our Fastest is stretching back out around two turns and will break from post 5 under Ty Kennedy.
“She’ll probably be near the lead,” said Gelner.
Gelner trains the horses for Mark Norman and Norman Stables. The runners will start as separate betting interests in the Treasure Chest field of six, which also includes Gulfstream Park stakes winner Boerne and Prairie Meadows stakes winner Kela’s Turn.
Becca’s Rocket started her streak Aug. 18, when she won a nonwinners-of-three allowance over 7 1/2 furlongs on turf at Evangeline Downs. One start later, she moved to the track’s dirt surface and won a no-conditions allowance at a mile in the mud Sept. 18. Becca’s Rocket earned a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 83.
“She’s in the zone, so we hope she’ll run like she did last time,” Gelner said. “I think she liked the off track a little bit. She ran a big race, outran [Boerne], who is back in this race.”
Shes Our Fastest enters off a fifth-place finish in a no-conditions allowance over five furlongs Oct. 13 at Delta. The race was her first since July.
“She didn’t really fire,” Gelner said. “She’s been training good, and I look for her to run a big race.”
Shes Our Fastest is a multiple stakes winner, and unlike Becca’s Rocket and Boerne, she has raced at Delta. Shes Our Fastest is a two-time winner over the local strip and last year was third in the Treasure Chest. The winner of the Treasure Chest last year, Gibberish, on Saturday captured the Grade 3, $150,000 Turnback the Alarm Handicap at Belmont Park.
Shes Our Fastest would go over $500,000 in earnings with a win Friday.
Kela’s Turn defeated Shes Our Fastest in winning the Oct. 13 race at Delta. The Beyer of 85 that Kela’s Turn earned is the best last-race number in the Treasure Chest. Earlier this year, Kela’s Turn won a pair of Iowa-bred stakes, the Bob Bryant at six furlongs in May and the Hawkeyes at a mile and a sixteenth in August.
Boerne won the Azalea in 2020 at Gulfstream and in more recent times won the Lane’s End Danny Shifflett Scholarship Stakes for Texas-breds in June at Lone Star Park. Since the race, Boerne has won a mile allowance wire to wire at Evangeline.