Yes Factor takes next step in optional claimer

HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – A pair of allowance events positioned as the first and third races highlight Friday’s 10-race program. Statebred fillies and mares will get things rolling, going six furlongs under optional-claiming conditions for a $40,000 purse. An hour later, turf sprint specialists will compete at five furlongs on the grass for a $48,000 pot.

Yes Factor, a wire-to-wire winner facing males Nov. 14 in her only start, will get a class check when she steps up against vastly more experienced rivals in the opener for trainer Terri Pompay. The daughter of The Factor has posted a pair of bullet half-mile drills subsequent to her debut, the most recent over a very deep track here last Friday morning.

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Her chief competition could include R True Talent, Body High and Hello Juliet.

R True Talent has not raced since a second-place finish in the Gasparilla Stakes in January at Tampa Bay Downs. Like Yes Factor, she is training forwardly for the race.

Body High has won four of her last five starts, all for trainer Jorge Navarro, who claimed the 3-year-old filly for $12,500 out of a second place finish here in March.

In the third race, trainer Jason Servis will send out two of the leading contenders, Fig Jelly and Seize.

Fig Jelly came 1 3/4 lenghts short of running down his pace-setting stablemate World of Trouble in Saratoga’s Quick Call Stakes on Aug. 8. World of Trouble flattered the effort a couple of months later when he finished second in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint.

Seize will make his first start since being transferred to Servis’s care following his gate-to-wire 3 ¼-length entry-level allowance win early this past summer at Churchill Downs.