Three Rules starts career reboot in sprint

Trainer Luis Carvajal just retired one high-class sprinter whose best days looked like they were behind him. Now he’s tasked with trying to revive the career of another one.

Carvajal and owner Raymond Mamone just last week called it a career with Imperial Hint, one of the world’s fastest dirt sprinters. Wednesday, in the featured fifth race at Tampa Bay Downs, Three Rules makes his first start for Carvajal. Three Rules, owned by Bert Pilcher’s Shade Tree Thoroughbreds and Tom Fitzgerald, never rose nearly as high as Imperial Hint and he’s fallen farther.

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Three Rules dominated the Florida Sire Stakes series way back in 2016 before finishing sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile. His 3-year-old season started promisingly enough, with a second in the Swale Stakes and a third in the Fountain of Youth, and when he was cut back to shorter races during the summer of 2017, he won the Grade 3 Carry Back. That was Three Rules’s last victory and the last time he ran with anything like his original spark. He lost the two starts he made in 2018 and was abysmal in three 2019 races.

Six-year-old Three Rules finally popped back onto the work tab in May and has posted lively drills, but even if Carvajal has started to turn Three Rules the right direction, he’s unlikely to deliver a winning performance so far from anything like contending form.

The even-money morning-line favorite in this six-furlong dash with multiple allowance conditions and a $100,000 claiming option is My Boy Lenny, who races for the $100,000 after comfortably winning a sloppy track start at this class level and distance in his most recent race. Trainer Gerald Bennett and owner J J Brevan Stable reclaimed My Boy Lenny for $32,000 two races ago and continues to value the 5-year-old gelding well above the most recent purchase price.

Devileye is the other horse to strongly consider. Devileye was beaten eight lengths by My Boy Lenny last out, but doesn’t show his best on wet tracks. Illinois-bred Devileye, a five-time winner in six-furlong races, has contending form as recently as last Nov. 16 and would benefit from a fast pace in front of him.