Weekend GamePlan for May 29, 2021: Picks for Pennine Ridge, Audubon, Mr. Prospector
Fourteen – that’s the total number of entrants in the three graded turf stakes Saturday at Santa Anita. I went to dive into the past performances and hit my head on the bottom of the pool.
We'll be making stops at Churchill and at rainy Belmont and Monmouth.
Pennine Ridge
DRF’s David Grening reported Thursday that this race is likely to remain on grass, even with plenty of rain forecast Friday into Saturday, so I’d expect a wet course. Hard Love is the obvious choice here having done nothing wrong in his three-start career, and I don’t actively oppose him. But with the potential X-factor of wet ground, the perfect trip he pulled in what seemed like a soft spot last out, and his lack of a speed-figure edge (granted, this is grass racing, where final-time figures can be murkier), I’m willing to try and get Sainthood home.
Not even completely sure that Sainthood is the Todd Pletcher “A Team” in the Pennine Ridge, since Shaftesbury did look sharp in his last-start maiden win and gets Irad Ortiz Jr., where the mount on Sainthood goes to Joel Rosario, little used by Pletcher. But I’ll leave jockeyology to the credentialed jockeyologists and try to focus on Sainthood himself.
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Pletcher twice has worked this colt on turf since he ran – overmatched from the moment the entry was made – in the Kentucky Derby, and Pletcher told Grening this week that he’d noticed a turn of foot from Sainthood in those breezes previously unseen from the colt. I might argue we did once see such acceleration – at the end of the Jeff Ruby Steaks. There, coming off the hardest of hard-fought maiden dirt wins at Fair Grounds, Sainthood was sawed off (legally) in upper stretch by eventual winner Like a King while trying to get to the far outside for his final move. Sainthood lost all his momentum but gathered himself, got into the clear, and made an eye-catching surge the last 75 yards or so. Both sides of his pedigree lend grass influences and, Derby aside, Sainthood has some positional pace and should stay the trip. At something like the published 9-2 win odds, which seem reasonable, he’s a fair play as the new face in this division.
Audubon
Don’t agree with the morning line in this nine-furlong grass contest for 3-year-olds (same conditions as the Pennine Ridge) as Royal Prince, listed as the 3-1 chalk, seems less likely to be favored than Palazzi or Like the King. Of those three I prefer Palazzi, who has hit the highest performance level and had an impossible post in the American Turf, but in the final assessment will fill in the “none of the above” blank and bet on Cellist.
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Cellist hit the personal radar when he raced at Keeneland after two encouraging performances in Florida, a troubled debut followed by a rock-solid maiden win more impressive than the bare margin of victory. At Keeneland, in a stakes-class first-level allowance race, he might have been moved a touch early, showing the best turn of foot so far in his career, and was just run down by the Bill Mott-trained Floriform, who has yet to run back but seems an exciting prospect. Nearly two lengths separated Cellist from the show horse at Keeneland, and I really don’t believe the defeat had anything to do with an inability to stay this 1 1/8-mile trip. The colt has worked back three times and is set to pop at a fair price.
Mr. Prospector
Don’t love this race or my selection, but a lack of non-Churchill alternatives and the short SoCal fields leaves me with Wind of Change in the Mr. Prospector on opening weekend at Monmouth.
There’s rain forecast but Wind of Change’s sparkling wet-track record includes a number of South American starts on tracks rated “good,” which might not have a lot of relevance here. The 5-2 morning-line odds discourage, though I think he might be a touch longer, but he ran fast enough to win this in his last start, his first start under trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. With a decent break, Wind of Change looks like he can clear and dictate terms from his rail draw. Mark a line through the two Lasix-free starts this season and his form cozily fits this spot.