Team Martinez has Alex of Ice sitting on ready

In a different world – you know, the one in which we all lived until mid-March – Alex of Ice might well have been making his first start of the spring this month at Prairie Meadows in Iowa. But with the start of the Prairie Meadows season delayed indefinitely because of coronavirus, Alex of Ice instead anchors the early 50-cent pick five on Wednesday at Fonner Park in Nebraska.

Alex of Ice starts in race 4, a nonwinners-of-two allowance race carded for six furlongs that’s the early pick five’s penultimate leg. He’s listed at 7-2 on the track’s morning line, but that price is a pipe dream. Alex of Ice looks a likely solid favorite for the wife-husband team of trainer Kelli Martinez and jockey Armando Martinez as he makes his Fonner Park debut.

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Martinez and owner D and L Farms claimed Alex of Ice out of a $15,000 maiden claimer last October at Keeneland, and Alex of Ice looked worth the price in his three starts last fall and winter, the last of which yielded a decisive maiden special weight win Jan. 20 at Mahoning Valley.

Martinez runs plenty of horses new to Fonner at the tight-turning half-mile bullring track and said she and her husband, who exercises in the morning, generally get a good feel for a horse’s Fonner suitability through training alone.

“We make sure Armando takes every horse in the morning at some point,” Kelli Martinez said. “We have horses here we won’t run here because they obviously hate it.”

Alex of Ice does not appear to be such a horse. Martinez suggested he had the quality to run for a considerably larger allowance purse at Prairie Meadows, but Alex of Ice is ready to go now and so is set to make his Fonner debut.

“He’s been working and galloping on the racetrack and doing everything real well,” she said.

The early pick five ends with a no-conditions Nebraska-bred race that could yield a decent-priced winner if, as seems likely on paper, Phlash Drive and Love At Night hook up in a duel. Love At Night, a 7-year-old mare, and Phlash Drive, a 4-year-old gelding, appear to be need-the-lead types bound for a prolonged pace battle. Just four others are entered here, and Be My Shadow, who was second to Phlash Drive on March 7, could have the right combination of running style and recent form. A pick five play also might include rail-drawn Go Gold, who hasn’t raced since September but returned from a similar extended vacation during March 2019 at Fonner with a competitive performance.