Strike Power's return spot comes up tough

Thursday’s 10-race program at Gulfstream Park has a Saturday feel about it with four optional-claiming races on the docket, the last of which features the return of Strike Power, who was last seen locally competing in the 2018 Florida Derby. There will be a carryover of more than $442,000 in the Rainbow 6 when racing resumes Thursday.

Strike Power will face eight rivals in the afternoon’s ninth event going 6 1/2 furlongs under optional-claiming conditions. The field is a good one and also includes the Grade 1-placed Sweetontheladies, Grade 3 winner Three Rules, and Grade 3-placed Reason to Soar.

Strike Power, who is trained by Mark Hennig, has not started since finishing last of nine as the 2-1 favorite in his turf debut last summer at Saratoga. The overnight stakes was the fourth disappointing effort in succession for Strike Power since his second-place finish in the Grade 2 Fountain of Youth here in March 2018. Strike Power had launched his career with two impressive victories, including an easy and popular triumph in the Grade 3 Swale here nearly 15 months ago.

“He had some throat issues last year, it gradually got to the point where it was bothering him more and more and eventually we stopped on him to do tie-back surgery,” said Hennig, referring to a procedure used to help improve a horse’s breathing. “He’s been doing great since we’ve started him back in training and when this opportunity presented itself we figured he likes Gulfstream, so we wanted to run him here before heading back to New York.”

Hennig said he’s not sure what to expect from Strike Power in his return.

“I think we’ve gotten sufficient work into him, but he does carry more weight than the average horse and it turned out to be a pretty salty spot for a comeback,” Hennig said.

The stretch-running Sweetontheladies remains winless in his last 20 starts dating back to the summer of 2017 but has been graded stakes-placed five times during that period, with his most notable effort a third behind Imperial Hint in the Grade 1 Vanderbilt last summer at Saratoga.

Three Rules, like Strike Power, returns from a significant layoff, having been idle since finishing far behind Reason to Soar under high-priced optional-claiming conditions here during the summer of 2018. Three Rules easily swept the Florida Sire Stakes as a 2-year-old in 2016 before finishing a tiring sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. He became a graded stakes winner the following July with a popular victory in the Grade 3 Carry Back.

Trainer George Weaver will put blinkers back on Reason to Soar in the hope of recapturing the form that led him to win three races in a row and finish second behind X Y Jet in the Grade 3 Smile Sprint during the opening half of his 2018 campaign.

Favoritism could actually fall to the non-stakes tested but only once-beaten New Jersey-bred Dial Operator, who has captured four of his five career starts for trainer Jason Servis. He will be returning from a layoff that stretches back to a victory in a restricted allowance race Aug. 4 at Monmouth Park.

◗ Servis admitted he was pleasantly surprised with the performance of former claimer A Bit of Both who made her stakes debut a winning one, by three lengths, over the lightly raced Karama in Saturday’s Game Face. Bit of Both was backed down to 3-5 in the scratch-reduced field and led throughout under jockey Paco Lopez to post her fourth victory in five starts while earning a career best Beyer Speed Figure of 88.

“I never expected her to run that good,” Servis said. “The one time she got beat, it came after she had come up with a temperature and had to be scratched from an earlier race, so I guess maybe she still had a little something going on that day. But her last couple of races were excellent and perfect confidence-boosters for the stakes on Saturday.”

◗ Apprentice jockey Cristian Torres earned his first career victory when guiding Dempsey to a wire-to-wire tally in Sunday’s fourth race for trainer Ralph Nicks. A 21-year-old native of Puerto Rico, Torres served as an exercise rider for Mark Casse for 1 1/2 years before launching his riding career. He registered his milestone Sunday in just his seventh lifetime mount.”