Turf or dirt, Devileye ready for Buck's Boy Handicap

Trainer Michele Boyce got within less than one length of winning the $100,000 Hawthorne Derby last weekend with the Illinois-bred 3-year-old Blue Sky Kowboy. And Blue Sky Kowboy might not even be the best Illinois-bred 3-year-old in the Boyce barn.

Five starts into his career, Devileye still hasn’t experienced the agony of defeat – or defeat of any sort, for that matter. He’s already won stakes on dirt and Polytrack, and on Saturday will try to take his talent to turf in the $100,000 Buck's Boy Handicap. Maybe. The Buck's Boy, for Illinois-breds 3-years-old and up, is carded for 1 1/16 miles on turf, but rain is forecast Thursday into Friday, and then again Saturday, in the Hawthorne area.

It won’t take a sustained downpour for both the Buck's Boy and the $100,000 Illini Princess to be moved to the main track. That should be fine for Devileye, who won the Jim Edgar Illinois Futurity last winter going a route of ground on the Hawthorne dirt. But it would not be welcome news for Lovely Loyree, the Boyce-trained mare who has a great chance in the Illini Princess as long as the race stays on grass, but probably won’t start if it comes off.

A larger takeaway regarding these two races, which are the second (Illini Princess) and fourth (Buck's Boy) on the Hawthorne card: Despite a precipitous drop in the Illinois breeding industry, there still are a healthy number of talented Illinois-breds kicking around. And a bunch are in these two races.

In fact, if the Bucks Boy stays on grass, Devileye, for all his talent, could be up against it. His main rivals, all of whom are older, include Christian C, who won four times at the Arlington meet and was last seen racing in the Grade 1 Shadwell Turf Mile; Cammack, who beat the multiple graded stakes winner Kasaqui last out in the Les Ahrens Memorial at Arlington; Oak Brook, who was fourth in the Les Ahrens, finished a close sixth in the Arlington Million, and seems to like the sort of soft turf he’d get Saturday; and In the Chamber, who has scored two good wins in a row since being claimed by owner William Stiritz and trainer Scott Becker.

Goneghost could be Devileye’s chief rival on dirt, but with a favorable weight of 115 pounds, eight fewer than Cammack and Oak Brook, Devileye should have a chance on grass. His dam is the excellent producer Deville, whose best runners to date have been turf horses.

As for Lovely Loyree, she was fourth last out in the Sept. 23 Steve Morgan Memorial at Arlington, but might have needed that race after a break, and Lovely Loyree thrived on wet turf winning the Mike Spellman Memorial in June at Arlington. She’s a strong 2-1-1 from four Hawthorne turf starts, but could be challenged by Prado’s Sweet Ride, One Liz, and Stormin Elle.

But if this race gets switched to dirt? All bets are off.