Straight Arrow headed back to turf

Straight Arrow arrived back at Tampa Bay Downs over the weekend following his seventh-place finish in Friday’s Grade 2 Clark Stakes at Churchill Downs and will be pointed to a turf race for his next start, most likely at Gulfstream Park, trainer Mike Dini said.

Dini said Straight Arrow had a case of the thumps, an electrolyte imbalance, coming out of the race.

“I don’t know if the track was too loose that he couldn’t get a hold of it,” Dini said. “He had thumps real bad where they don’t get their breath.”

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Dini has maintained for a while that Straight Arrow would be better on the turf. In his lone turf try, on Sept. 15 at Aqueduct, he finished fifth, but encountered significant traffic. He is a half-brother to the $1.4 million earner Disco Partner, who was all turf.

On Oct. 15, Straight Arrow won an off-the-turf race at Aqueduct by nine lengths and then came back two weeks later to win the $250,000 Empire Classic for New York-breds. Both races were run over wet, sealed tracks.

Dini said that in August, when Straight Arrow won a dirt race at Saratoga, winning rider Jose Lezcano told him, “Put him on grass, he fights the racetrack,” Dini said. “When he had those two sealed tracks, he got a hold of it.”

Dini said he would likely point for an open first-level allowance race at Gulfstream early in 2024.

Handle down opening week

All-sources handle for the three-day opening week was $10,913,668, down 3.1 percent from last year’s figure of $11,266,052, according to comparisons made by examining Equibase charts.

There were 27 races run over three days each year with nine turf races run this year, one more than last.

There were 9.48 starters per race this year compared to 8.48 a year ago.

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