Xy Speed launches 9-year-old campaign
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Although Xy Speed is in the twilight of his career, the old veteran is not quite ready to hang up his shoes.
Xy Speed won four of his nine starts in 2024, including a pair of overnight handicaps on the turf during the spring. He banked $171,395 last year for his owners, the Clear Stars Stable, who claimed the son of First Samurai for a bargain $32,000 at Saratoga during the summer of 2022. He will likely go off as one of the top choices when launching his 9-year-old campaign in the first of two $97,000 allowance races that highlight Sunday’s nine-race card at Gulfstream Park.
Xy Speed has certainly found a home over the local turf course since joining trainer Michael Lerman’s barn early in 2023, winning seven times and finishing in the money in 12 of 15 tries over Gulfstream’s inner strip. He will return to the optional claiming and allowance ranks on Sunday off a disappointing 11th-place effort in the Janus Stakes in his 2024 finale.
“This is the first horse we picked out for Clear Stars, who wanted to have some horses in Florida,” Lerman recalled. “And he’s become a perfect Gulfstream Park horse. We felt he was overmatched against stakes company last time, so we’re just trying to place him Sunday where he needs to be at this point in his career.”
Xy Speed will take on seven rivals, including the stakes-winning Mattingly, who also gets plenty of class relief when making his first start since finishing fifth stretching out to one mile in the Grade 2 Secretariat on Aug. 11 at Colonial Downs. The well-travelled Mattingly competed at four different tracks in his last four starts at 3 and now returns to the local turf course for the first time since finishing second in the Royal Palm Juvenile Stakes in May 2023.
Other key contenders in the race include Runnin’ Rocket and Biz Biz Buzz, both runners-up under similar conditions in races decided over the Tapeta course in their last starts.
The co-featured eighth race is an entry-level allowance for 3-year-old fillies to be decided at 1 1/16 miles on the synthetic Tapeta strip. It lured the stakes-winning Special Aviator and red-hot War Signal, who’s looking for her third straight victory over the course.
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