Top Gun Girl can push Ward's stable to new heights
Wesley Ward still has a presence in Florida, but even in wintertime, the 53-year-old trainer maintains his primary base of operations in Kentucky.
It’s an approach that’s working quite well. Ward already has established a career high for single-year earnings in 2021, and when Top Gun Girl runs Friday night as the morning-line favorite in the $64,000 allowance feature at Turfway Park, Ward will be bidding to surpass the $8 million threshold.
“It’s been another great year,” said Ward, whose previous high in a career dating to 1991 was in 2014, when his horses earned more than $6.14 million. “I’m very humbled.”
Ward, a Washington state native whose career path includes lengthy stints in California, then Florida, is now stabled year round at Keeneland, from where he plots much of his year around Royal Ascot, Saratoga, and both Keeneland meets while also showing up at assorted other venues. His top horses generally get time off during the winter, but Ward also keeps enough stock active to have won or tied for leading trainer at each of the last four winter-spring meets (2018-21) at Turfway in Florence, Ky.
A horse such as Top Gun Girl, owned by the Slam Dunk Racing partnership of Nick Cosato, typifies the Ward business model. The 2-year-old daughter of Air Force Blue will be making her third career start in the six-furlong Tapeta race after showing big speed in a couple of maiden-special turf sprints, the latest an Oct. 23 breakthrough at Keeneland.
“She’s got some real quicks and ought to like the Tapeta,” said Ward. “We got started a little later on her than some of our other 2-year-olds and once we got her rolling there was no reason to stop on her.”
Top Gun Girl is part of an oversubscribed field in race 7, the only allowance on an eight-race Friday card that starts at 6:15 p.m. Eastern. Post time for the feature is 9:16.
Gerardo Corrales, the leading jockey at a holiday meet that runs through Dec. 31, has the call on Top Gun Girl, whose top threats appear to be two other last-out maiden winners, Erase and Friar Laurence, along with Twenty Four Mamba, who exits three straight stakes in Canada.
For the second straight winter, ontrack fans are not permitted at Turfway as the facility continues to undergo a total overhaul expected for completion sometime next summer. Arrangements are in place for owners and trainers to watch their horses on-site.
The three-month winter spring meet starts Jan. 1.
◗ Eleven 3-year-olds and upward are set to clash Saturday night under the Turfway lights in the $100,000 Prairie Bayou (race 5, 8:14 p.m.), with Rushie, Big Dreaming, and Snapper Sinclair among a core of lukewarm favorites. Rushie is among a dozen or so horses being overseen by assistant Justin Curran in the first Turfway winter campaign for California-based trainer Michael McCarthy.
◗ Breeze Rider was credited with an 88 Beyer Speed Figure for her front-running 4 3/4-length victory last Saturday in the $95,840 My Charmer at Turfway. Trained by Steve Manley for the Mike Piazza Racing Stable, Breeze Rider, a 4-year-old Paynter filly, now has won 11 of 24 starts, including four of her last five.
◗ A fundraiser organized by owner-trainer Carlo Vaccarezza to benefit the tornado victims in western Kentucky is being held Jan. 2 at Frank & Dino’s restaurant in Lexington. Further information is available at (859) 303-4007.
