Touch of Fire may be best bet in deep, crowded Gun Runner
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Bottas won the Hall of Fame Stakes on Aug. 7 at Saratoga, beating third-place Touch of Fire by the better part of two lengths, yet Touch of Fire looks like the better bet Monday at Kentucky Downs in the Gun Runner Stakes.
Six days after the Hall of Fame, Mr. A. P. captured a Del Mar first-level turf allowance by 1 1/4 lengths over Vitruvian Man, but here, too, one might look to the vanquished rather than the vanquisher in the Gun Runner.
Also running in the Gun Runner, a one-mile contest restricted to 3-year-olds, are the second-, fourth-, fifth-, sixth-, and seventh-place finishers in the Secretariat Stakes on Aug. 1 at Colonial Downs. Those horses, in order of finish, are Infiltrate, Fuzzbuster, Turf Star, Conducted, and Street Beast. Fuzzbuster might hold the most appeal, considering price, among that quintet, and even Street Beast rates a look.
That makes nine of the 14 entrants in the Gun Runner, which is worth a cool $1.75 million to Kentucky-breds. Those bred elsewhere aren’t running for peanuts: The unsubsidized portion of the purse is $875,000. Fourteen can start in the race and also-eligible Baytown Dreamer could get in if Blackmail, as trainer Mark Casse said might happen, is scratched. Blackmail has an outside shot, Baytown Dreamer none at all, at least on paper.
Touch of Fire, a Juddmonte homebred trained by Brad Cox, has gone heavily favored in four of his six starts and has not always run to his price. Even now, six starts into his career, Touch of Fire remains a work in progress.
He still has not assented to fully relaxing off the pace in his races and pulled too hard early in the Hall of Fame, perhaps still fired up from his previous race, the Grade 1 Belmont Derby, where Touch of Fire was used out of the gate to make the lead, tactics dictated by an outside post. He ran solidly there, finishing fourth, and, in the end, he didn’t cause his Hall of Fame defeat.
Touch of Fire had plenty of run turning into the Hall of Fame homestretch but also had nowhere to run. His jockey probed a couple potential splits, could find no gaps, and by the time he steered off heels and got Touch of Fire outside and into the clear, Bottas had sailed to the lead and on to victory.
“I thought he ran well,” Cox said. “Our horse didn’t have much of a chance.”
Touch of Fire has worked well twice since the Hall of Fame, and the way he breezes gives Cox hope that the colt can continue improving in the afternoon.
“He’s become a really, really good work horse. Before we started him, he wasn’t working like that,” Cox said.
Bottas has found plenty of his own trouble throughout a generally successful career, and trainer Miguel Clement’s horses have nearly all run well at this meet.
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Neither Californian will likely win the Gun Runner, but where Mr. A. P. got a perfect trip pressing a slow pace, Vitruvian had to rally from several lengths behind and was closing decently the final half-furlong. Mr. A. P. doesn’t have much turn of foot and has never left California, while Vitruvian does have a kick and actually began his career in Kentucky.
Infiltrate did run big in the Secretariat, his first race in more than eight months and first on turf. Supercharger, a talented horse in the midst of a form cycle, mildly outfinished him.
“If he’d had a run, you might argue he’d have won the race,” trainer Brendan Walsh said. “We always kind of had grass in mind for him. He’s a big horse, but he’s very athletic and light on his feet. I just can’t see how he wouldn’t take to [Kentucky Downs].”
Fuzzbuster made his turf-route debut in the Secretariat. Three-sixteenths of a mile out, he seemed to be running in place – until he wasn’t. Past the eighth pole, Fuzzbuster came to life, gaining noticeably at the finish, a strong candidate to benefit from the addition of blinkers Monday.
Street Beast ran flat in the Secretariat but hadn’t started in three months and entered with a very light workout pattern. He stands to improve and won twice last season at Kentucky Downs, including a seven-length blowout in the Juvenile Mile. He figures to track the pace of Conducted, who beat him last time at Colonial, but might not on Monday at Kentucky Downs.
Juvenile Fillies
In the department of “the rich get richer,” trainer Brad Cox, who already has racked up nearly 200 winners this year, unleashed a monster July 24 at Saratoga. Cox has many monsters in his several shed rows, and the 2-year-old filly Conflict looks like another one.
Debuting in a Saratoga turf route, Conflict showed a strong turn of foot going from seventh at the top of the stretch to first at the stretch call, and after idling for a short time, she put away her rivals with a strong finish and excellent gallop-out. The eye-catching first start makes Conflict the 7-5 morning-line favorite in the $750,000 Juvenile Fillies over one mile.
“We’ve been pointing for this,” said Cox, who trains the daughter of Golden Pal for Qatar Racing.
Conflict has a lot of scope to go with her talent. She looks more like a late-season 3-year-old than a summer 2-year-old.
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“She’s a big girl. I thought she was hitting her best stride late last time – maybe the farther the better for her,” Cox said.
Conflict and Flavien Prat drew the rail in an 11-runner field where only Duty Bound has more than a maiden win to her credit. Duty Bound, a debut winner over 5 1/2 furlongs at Colonial, beat Juvenile Fillies runners Elegant Miz and Cardio Cat in an Aug. 29 Kentucky Downs race restricted to horses who went through Keeneland’s September yearling auction.
More appealing than that group are Up Before the Dawn and Citrus Springs. Up Before the Dawn debuted July 19 at Ellis and rallied from well behind a slow pace to win a turf-route maiden going away. Citrus Springs, in from Ireland for trainer Joseph O’Brien, improved markedly from her first to second starts. Third time out, racing for the first time in a visor, Citrus Springs made an early lead and routed 15 maidens at Gowran Park.
◗ It says a lot about the Kentucky Downs purse structure that the restricted Lucky Lantern Stakes seems like an afterthought with a mere $250,000 purse. For 3-year-old fillies who haven’t won a stakes race, the 6 1/2-furlong Lucky Lantern drew an overflow field of 16 but will go without the filly that would be favored, Sapphire Beach, who was to race instead on Saturday.
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