Tiller searching for a special win with Go Kart Mozart in Pink Lloyd
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ETOBICOKE, Ontario – There’s nothing that trainer Robert Tiller would like more than to win Sunday’s $100,000 Pink Lloyd Stakes for the second time at Woodbine. Tiller trained the brilliant Pink Lloyd, perhaps the greatest Canadian sprinter of all time, and his fondness for the five-time champion sprinter and 2017 Canadian Horse of the Year lingers on.
Tiller won 2024 Pink Lloyd with Patches O’Houlihan. Sunday, he’s sending out the speedy Go Kart Mozart, who has been a model of consistency for owner/breeder Frank DiGiulio Jr. The 4-year-old wired conditioned allowance/optional-claiming foes last time out going 5 1/2 furlongs. He has a solid record over the six-furlong distance of the Pink Lloyd.
“He’s in good order,” Tiller said.
Poulin in O T is another gritty front-runner. He won his season opener at Gulfstream before finishing a close third in the Thorncliffe Stakes here May 3, a performance trainer Steve Owens was content with.
“I felt it was a good race,” Owens said. “I thought I had him a little too weighty. That was my fault, coming from Gulfstream back to here, so we made a few adjustments and he’s thicker and more aerodynamic now.”
Light the Lamp and Souped Up are two more contenders in the seven-horse field of Ontario-sired runners.
Light the Lamp, a venerable 7-year-old with 10 wins in 35 starts, ran third in last year’s Pink Lloyd. In his May 10 seasonal bow in a conditioned allowance/optional-claimer, he rallied to finish a close third behind Piper’s Factor and Go Kart Mozart, both next-out winners.
Souped Up possesses tactical speed. He wired a modest field of conditioned allowance opponents off a seven-month layoff June 21.
Ballade
Reigning Canadian champion female sprinter Little Teddy will be favored in the filly and mare version of the Pink Lloyd, the $100,000 Ballade. She ran down the rapid mare Miss Vyvyanne when landing her May 9 season debut in a five-furlong conditioned allowance/optional claimer, for which she got a 94 Beyer Speed Figure. Miss Vyvyanne subsequently beat the boys in the Grade 2 Highlander.
“I think the most impressive aspect was her being 70 percent fit and running a 94 Beyer off the layoff and beating a [future] Grade 2 winner who was winter raced,” trainer Santino Di Paola said. “It kind of makes me think the sky’s the limit for her this year.”
Tiller entered front-runner Minimum Forty and pace-stalker Home for a Rest in the Ballade, which he has won four times.
The lightly raced 4-year-old Minimum Forty has won 3 of 4 starts, including two Ontario-sired allowances.
“She’s had her issues,” Tiller said. “She was operated on early as a 3-year-old. She’s really in good order. I think her last start proved that.”
Home for a Rest, another DiGiulio homebred, has reached full bloom this year at 5. She cleared the first open allowance condition in her season opener and then doubled up most recently in a conditioned allowance/optional claimer.
◗ Sunday’s expanded 12-race card includes all seven races from Thursday’s canceled program.
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