AUBURN, Wash. – While a $50,000 purse might seem like low-hanging fruit to anyone with a fast 2-year-old, only five horses were entered to compete in Sunday’s six-furlong Emerald Express for colts and geldings. For veteran trainer Bill Tollett, who will saddle likely favorite Gold Rush Dancer, it’s a prime opportunity to win an Emerald Downs stakes race for the first time in nearly a decade.The Emerald Express is part of the Northwest Race Series and requires periodic nomination fees. For those late to the party, a $5,000 supplemental fee gains entry. Tollett and owner John Parker were so enthused with Gold Rush Dancer’s recent maiden victory that they parted with the $5,000. They can come close to breaking even with a third-place finish, but Tollett, who last won an Emerald stakes with Judicature in 2006, has loftier goals. “I think he’ll be very tough. I think we’ve got a good shot,” Tollett said of Gold Rush Dancer, who pressed the pace in his maiden win before kicking away to prevail by three lengths. “He wasn’t even asked the last time. The rider never touched him, and he ran away from that horse who finished second.”Tollett has been high on Gold Rush Dancer from the start. A Parker homebred, the colt is by Private Gold, a son of Seeking the Gold, and from the In Excess mare Dances On Water. There are speed influences on both sides of his pedigree, and Gold Rush Dancer worked forwardly leading up to his career debut, where he was bet down to 9-5. “I told the owner he’d win his first out,” Tollett said. “And I said he’d win his first start in a stake, so I’ve got that to prove.”Tollett said he couldn’t recall his last stakes victory, though he did remember having “a lot of nice horses before all my clients with money died off.” After a long dry spell, he admits that the Emerald Express is not just another race. “Winning a stakes race would be big,” he said. “A trainer trains for his 10 percent – that would be a nice 10 percent.”Barkley is the “other” horse in the Emerald Express. Trained by Howard Belvoir, Barkley overcame a flatfooted start in his debut to win going away. He earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 54 in that 4 1/2-furlong sprint (Gold Rush Dancer was assigned a 53 for his maiden win) and is likely to appreciate any added ground. By Munnings and from a Medaglia d’Oro mare, Barkley was a $21,000 Keeneland yearling purchase last September. “He’s really a nice colt,” Belvoir said. “Watching him train, he might not look that impressive. He’s just like a saddle horse, he just goes along. But then he works, and he’s very impressive. His stride is long, and he’s a flashy colt, a chestnut with white all over him.”Belvoir said he was prepared for Barkley’s slow getaway in his first start. “I knew he was going to break slow because the past couple of times I tried him, he did, but I didn’t think he’d break that slow,” Belvoir said. “After that, [Javier Matias] just held onto him, and he marched. He’s got that stride when he’s right. I worked him back two weeks ago, and he went in 59 and something. I had him in behind horses, and he just gobbled ’em up. He ate dirt, and it didn’t bother him.”Wenzel sends out stakes duoTom Wenzel is nothing if not resilient. His biggest client, Jerre Paxton, died unexpectedly last fall, just before Wenzel was scheduled to receive another batch of horses. But Wenzel already has saddled three stakes winners at the meeting, and he’ll have two more chances on Sunday, with Packy’s Out in the Emerald Express and Absolutely Cool in the Mt. Rainier Handicap. Absolutely Cool, an 8-year-old gelding, has been primarily a sprinter through a career spanning 36 starts. When he rallied from 15 lengths off the pace to finish third in the one-mile Budweiser Handicap in his last start, it was just his second career route attempt and his first since 2010. Absolutely Cool has lots of speed, but the plan in the Budweiser was to take back and let the race unfold. “It was his first route race other than the one when he was a 3-year-old and still wanted to be a speed horse and made a premature move on the turn,” Wenzel said. “This year, he came up [from Turf Paradise] and had some trouble in the Governor’s that maybe cost him second or third, and we decided to give routing a try. His first route, we wanted to be careful as far as letting him run too early. It worked – he was running pretty fairly at the end of the race.“He worked six days out, and he’s coming into the race in decent shape,” Wenzel said of Absolutely Cool, who is likely to employ similar rating tactics in the 1 1/16-mile Mt. Rainier. “There’s a decent amount of speed in this one, even more than last time. Our racetrack is deeper this year and playing more fair to all kinds of runners. Speed isn’t as dominant as it once was here.”