Turf breeding may aid Diamond Dust in Green Carpet

Diamond Dust has been dusting his competition thus far, winning all three of his starts this season by open lengths. However, he faces a new challenge Saturday when trying turf in the $75,000 Green Carpet Stakes for Ohio-bred 3-year-olds, and perhaps that’s why the race has drawn a large field of 11 to Belterra Park.

Diamond Dust, who races as a homebred for trainer Tim Hamm’s Blazing Meadows Farm and WinStar Farm, has four stakes victories and a career mark of 6-2-0 from eight starts. In his only try at this 1 1/16-mile distance, he was a four-length winner of the Juvenile Stakes on last fall’s Best of Ohio showcase program. Jockey Luis Colon, who rode Diamond Dust in all of his starts as a 2-year-old, got on him for the first time this campaign in winning the Tall Stack Stakes the first weekend of May. He retains the mount Saturday.

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Diamond Dust, by Paynter, is out of Radiant Sky, who earned all three of her career victories on the synthetic track at Presque Isle Downs. The mare is by turf champion Leroidesanimaux, and it is the extended family of turf Grade/Group 1 winners Arazi, Joyeux Danseur, and Noverre.

I Wanna Win, who will have Abel Lezcano aboard for trainer James Jackson, is one of two stakes-placed entrants in this field, and one of just two entrants to have previously started on turf. The gelding finished fifth in an optional-claiming race sprinting on the Belterra turf last year. He comes in to the Green Carpet off a runner-up effort to Diamond Dust in the Tall Stack.

Nevans, who was seventh in the Tall Stack, finished fourth in an open-company optional-claiming event going a mile on the Tampa Bay turf.

Danefield was stakes placed as a juvenile, finishing second in the Loyalty Stakes.