Sunday allowance Take 2 for Hidden Scroll

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Hall of Fame trainer Bill Mott intended to get an earlier start to the year with Hidden Scroll, but the colt had other ideas.

A last-second starting-gate incident led to Hidden Scroll being scratched from a Jan. 17 allowance at Gulfstream Park, and following a six-week regrouping at Payson Park, the Juddmonte Farms homebred has resurfaced in the Gulfstream entries for Sunday.

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A $44,000 first-level allowance at six furlongs is the new jumping-off point for the 4-year-old Hidden Scroll, whose legacy remains a 14-length maiden victory on the 2019 Pegasus World Cup undercard that equated to a 104 Beyer Speed Figure.

Mott was otherwise occupied this weekend with Tacitus representing Juddmonte in the inaugural Saudi Arabia Cup, but his pre-race work with Hidden Scroll was pretty much finished by the time he departed. The Hard Spun colt was given enough time to recover from what Juddmonte general manager Garrett O’Rourke described as “a few scrapes, nothing major at all,” with three workouts ensuing. The latest drill, a half-mile in a bullet 48 seconds on Feb. 21, was out of the Payson training gate.

Hidden Scroll scarcely could have found a lighter spot for his first race since finishing third as an odds-on favorite in an allowance on the 2019 Kentucky Derby undercard. He’s one of seven older horses in the fifth of 12 races on a Sunday program that starts at noon Eastern, and surely he’ll be heavily favored with John Velazquez aboard.

Noon Time Gem, Lord Adare, and Stealth appear to be the main upset threats, although they all figure to have a very difficult time with Hidden Scroll, whose unveiling on Jan. 26, 2019, was enough to make him the favorite in the subsequent Fountain of Youth and Florida Derby. He finished fourth and sixth in those races before further disappointing the huge Derby Day crowd.

The Sunday feature allowance includes an additional $7,000 in bonuses for eligible Florida-breds, of which there is only one, Unpublished. It is not part of the Rainbow 6 sequence, which spans races 7-12. The Rainbow 6 jackpot was emptied Thursday by a solo winning ticket worth $468,945, marking the first time it had been swept since someone hit for more than $1.2 million on Feb. 17.

After Sunday, Gulfstream goes dark for two days before a five-day race week begins Wednesday. The Sunday forecast calls for sunshine and a high of 73.