Often it can be a struggle coming up with three plays for this exercise. Not this week. Too many options, not enough room for them. I don’t have much of an opinion on the Sam Davis, the headliner of a four-stakes Tampa Bay Downs card. In the Endeavour, I’d bet New York Girl at 4-1 but suspect she’ll be a lower-priced strong second choice to Counterparty Risk, on whom New York Girl is likely to get first run. At Santa Anita, the San Vicente just missed making the cut, but that worked out well since the horse I liked, Mr. Impossible, now is more likely to start in a maiden race on Sunday than in the San Vicente. At Oaklawn, I have a feeling Mr. Jagermeister, the pride of Minnesota, is set for one of this better recent performances and ought to be a fair price in the King Cotton Stakes, a race that holds appeal if, like me, you don’t hold 8-5 morning-line favorite Flagstaff in high regard. Onto the actual races. Thunder Road I don’t think it’s wrong to hope for more than 4-1, the morning-line odds on Hit the Road in this stepping-stone to the Kilroe Mile and Shoemaker Mile, both Grade 1s. He hasn’t raced since July, his highest Beyer Speed Figure of 89 doesn’t match up with the best numbers in this race, and he has never won a graded stakes race. I still love him here. :: Enhance your handicapping with DRF’s Santa Anita Clocker Report Hit the Road hit the national racing radar when he won the Zuma Beach as a 2-year-old with an eye-catching rally. The Zuma Beach is a negative key race vis-à-vis the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, but Hit the Road never had a chance in that race after breaking from post 13. He actually finished very fast though only fourth as the favorite in his 2-year-old finale, and when Hit the Road came back last summer as a 3-year-old, he looked like a different horse, both physically and stylistically. This was a boy-to-man transformation and unlike at 3 Hit the Road showed very useful tactical speed without compromising his finish; winning the Oceanside last summer at Del Mar, he really accelerated impressively when slipping between horses at the furlong grounds. It looks like trainer Dan Blacker has been able to put ample work into Hit the Road, whom I’ll assume is going to take another step forward at age 4. Bob and Jackie and Hembree are the Thunder Road favorites, and they’re pretty good, but I think Hit the Road can punch a little harder. Tampa Bay Sole Volante gave no run for my money in the Tropical Park Derby on Dec. 26, but I have to go back to him here at, one assumes, a considerably longer price. The move back to turf in December augured a move forward for Sole Volante, who, the thought goes, was always cut out to be a turf horse before being swept onto 2020’s raggedy Triple Crown trail when he won the Sam Davis Stakes, this card’s headliner. Things went off the rails before the Belmont, where Sole Volante misfired, and the train never got back on track last year. Sole Volante initially had been pointed to a race in November, didn’t make it, and his work pattern (which I was willing to overlook) suggested less-than-ideal preparation into his last start. Since the Tropical Park Derby, however, Sole Volante has gotten on a very strong pattern, and in watching all his recent breezes, he appears to have put on muscle and is showing increasing verve in his training. He still has those two excellent early turf performances as a marker of his grass potential, and perhaps today, in a race where there’s no one really to fear, is the day he builds on that. Withers I can’t see Risk Taking being lower than his 5-2 morning-line odds for the Withers, and I would take that price. Doing the weekly “Breakout Beyers” feature for Daily Racing Form, I came across this colt’s maiden win in December and expected to find your prototypical budding plodder, left behind in New York for the winter because he lacked speed and was one-paced. That’s not what I found, describing the colt as “looking more like a colt with some gears than a one-paced plodder. Interesting winter prospect.” Looks like Chad Brown has targeted this spot for quite some time. We already know Risk Taking stays the nine furlongs, and he should have ample pace at which to run.