LOST IRON
Trainer: Bill Mott
Last race: April 1, 4th
Finish: 1st by 2
Beyer: 79
Grandson of A.P. Indy added blinkers for his third start, and showed improved positional speed en route to a good-looking maiden win at 1 1/8 miles. Has the look of a typically slow-but-sure developer for Hall of Fame trainer.
WHISKEY TICKET, by Ghostzapper
Trainer: Bob Baffert
Last race: March 31, 4th
Finish: 2nd by head
Beyer: 94
First start in nine months, this Grade 3 winner pressed a strong pace, fought back late, and finished clear of third in a fine comeback. He will be tough next out in a similar N2X.
COMMENT: Valid is just a cut below the best in the game, and he had no trouble dispatching with this group. Coming off a tough-trip fourth in the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Handicap, he pressured early leader Enders Cat, took over before the field had gone a half-mile, held a clear lead into the lane, and came home strongly. The sloppy track didn’t bother him in the least. Team Colors stalked the pace, tried to make a run at Valid turning for home, kept after him, and finished well clear of the rest.
ARCADIA, Calif. – Field size is dreadfully short early Sunday at Santa Anita – the first six races average 6.8 per race. It’s always tough to find wagering value in small fields.
Fields are bigger later. The problem is that two standouts are blatantly obvious. Beach Patrol is the 2-1 favorite in race 7, a first-level turf allowance for 3-year-olds at 1 1/8 miles. Beach Patrol crushed a maiden race last out by nearly four lengths.
Saturday’s card at Gulfstream features an all-graded-stakes late pick four highlighted by the Grade 1 Florida Derby. That race, in case you haven’t heard, features a matchup between Nyquist and Mohaymen, the top two 3-year-olds in the country. Whether you prefer one of them over the other (I’m siding with Nyquist), it would seem a wise strategy to cover both in some manner in the pick four.
The early pick four at Aqueduct on Sunday looks like a manageable sequence, so we’ll take a small, stay-out-of-trouble play to close out the first week on the main track.
Race 2 – Longfor the City (5) comes off a throw-out trip against tougher and won big at this level three races back. Pretension (1) and Beautyinthepulpit (7) needed the camera to separate them in a spot like this three weeks ago.
A – 5
B – 1, 7
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Mohaymen was a lukewarm favorite through the first full day of wagering into the fourth and final pool of the 2016 Kentucky Derby Future Wager, which opened Friday at noon Eastern for the customary three-day run.
Odds are not locked in until the pool closes Sunday at 6 p.m. Eastern, so surely many fans will refrain from wagering until after the Florida Derby is run Saturday at Gulfstream Park, where the unbeatens Mohaymen and Nyquist will square off. They were the top two choices on the Pool 4 morning line issued by Churchill Downs.
Although the Saturday racing at Gulfstream and Turfway will dominate the public’s attention, Santa Anita offers a solid program featuring a pair of stakes races. Let’s take a look at some potential plays:
Race 10 – SHORTSTORMCOMING (4) – 8-1 morning line – 5-1 value line
Saturday is the signature day of the Turfway Park meeting, highlighted by the Grade 3 Spiral Stakes, a race that will award 50 Kentucky Derby qualifying points to the winner. Dan Illman and I already have previewed the pick four (available on drf.com/videos) consisting of races 7-10, but here I’ll break down the final three races of that sequence.
RACE 8
Getting off a bit slowly in a mile race on the turf at Tampa Bay requires that a horse be pressed to get position, and it is obvious that Determined, our Pick last week, wasn’t capable of doing that in his debut, though he did close belatedly to finish fifth. Tab him back at a longer distance. Meanwhile, it was a very short week as far as BreezeFigs maidens were concerned with only 45 of them getting to the gate—but nine of them won, a 20% strike rate. Five of those wins came on last Saturday’s card, including a BreezeFigs super
