Team Colors tries dirt in featured allowance

If Sunday’s seventh race at Gulfstream Park were a game of seven-card stud, it would include a pair of wild cards. Two of the seven entrants in the optional $62,500 claimer, Team Colors and On Draft, are mysteries on dirt, the surface on which they race Sunday.

Team Colors in particular is dangerous if he can maintain the form he has established on grass, which includes a pair of runner-up finishes in stakes company. One of those came at the seventh-race distance of 1 1/16 miles when he was beaten a head Dec. 19 in the Tropical Park Derby at Gulfstream.

Although his late-running style doesn’t necessarily fit the profile of a dirt horse, his pedigree does. By Street Cry, he is out of Teammate, a multiple graded stakes winner on dirt.

Jimmy Jerkens, who trains Team Colors for owner Joseph Allen, sees no downside to trying dirt with Team Colors for the first time, pointing to what he called “big works” on dirt from the colt at Palm Meadows this winter and Belmont Park in the fall.

“If it doesn’t work out, we can always go back to the turf,” he said.

He said experimentation is key when training racehorses, pointing to his 2014 Travers winner V. E. Day as an example. That colt had been a turf horse before being moved to dirt with greater success.

Joel Rosario, aboard Team Colors in his last two races, returns in the irons.

An uncoupled duo from trainer Todd Pletcher’s barn, Tennessee and Zambian Dream, are his principal foes. Tennessee ran third against a similar group after a troubled start earlier in the meet, while Zambian Dream returns from a 2 1/2-month layoff after finishing seventh in the Grade 2 Marathon at Keeneland.

The other wild card, On Draft, is a longshot, having scored his only win outside the maiden ranks in an allowance for Ontario-breds at Woodbine.

Key contenders

Tennessee (Last 3 Beyers: 79-87-87)

Returning from a short layoff in a Dec. 19 race going a one-turn mile at Gulfstream, he broke awkwardly and was shut off behind a wall of horses early. This forced jockey John Velazquez to alter the colt’s usual up-close racing style, and he rallied from ninth to be third, beaten four lengths.

Team Colors (Last 3 Beyers: 97-96-92)

He is the fastest horse in the field in terms of Beyer Speed Figures. He and Zambian Dream are the only two horses to have a recent Beyer in the mid-90s. Team Colors has done so twice, albeit on turf, compared to once for Zambian Dream, who did it on the Keeneland dirt.

Tarpy’s Surprise (Last 3 Beyers: 81-85-85)

A full brother to 2014 Louisiana Derby winner Vicar’s in Trouble, he comes off three consecutive runner-up finishes and returns to a Gulfstream track where he has a win, a second, and two thirds in four main-track starts.

Zambian Dream (Last 3 Beyers: 73-96-89)

Although beaten 22 lengths in the Marathon, a supporting stakes over Breeders’ Cup weekend, he ran well in a preceding dirt start with a close second in an allowance Oct. 11 at Keeneland behind eventual stakes winner Eagle.