HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Aside from a slightly earlier opening, the Gulfstream Park Championship meet will have a very familiar look to it when kicking off at 11:15 a.m. on Thanksgiving with an eight-race program. The feature is the $115,000 Wait a While for 2-year-old fillies on the turf, the first of 66 stakes to be decided here through the end of the session on March 30.
As usual, the meet will be highlighted by Gulfstream Park’s two marquee races, the $3 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational on Jan. 25 and the $1 million Florida Derby on March 29. The $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf remains the only other Grade 1 event on the schedule.
Local barn areas, including Palm Meadows, Palm Beach Downs, and Payson Park, figure to be full to capacity this season. Two additions of note to the local training ranks are Eclipse Award candidate Kenny McPeek, who has a string bedded down again at Gulfstream Park following a two-year absence, and Brad Cox, who has taken a barn for the first time at Payson Park.
“We’ve been up there since the third week of October, we’re starting with 30 horses, and so far we like what we’ve seen,” Cox said. “We’re not there with a huge intent to run in South Florida. But we will run. We definitely have some maidens to run there, and we’ve got the filly [Stunner] in the [My Dear Girl] stakes on Saturday.”
The jockey colony will again be led by perennial champion Irad Ortiz Jr., who is the heavy favorite to win a record sixth Gulfstream Park riding title. Ortiz, a five-time Eclipse Award winner, arrived on the local scene a bit earlier than usual this year, warming up for the Championship session by winning nine races over the final two days of the Sunshine meet, which ended Sunday.
Although Ortiz’s brother Jose, who finished second in the standings a year ago, has moved his tack to Fair Grounds this winter, the local colony is still considered the strongest in the country with regulars such as Luis Saez, John Velazquez, Javier Castellano, Joel Rosario, Junior Alvarado, and Edgard Zayas all on hand once again. The red-hot Dylan Davis plans to ride here regularly for the first time starting the first of the year.
Thursday’s opening-day card will mark the first time racing has ever been conducted at Gulfstream on Thanksgiving Day. Vice President of Racing Mike Lakow, for one, is excited about the decision to kick off the new season with a bang on the holiday.
“We’ve had really good weekends over the past several weeks, and I Iike the idea of building on that momentum and opening on Thanksgiving and giving the customers a really nice product, four excellent days of racing, to get the main meet started,” Lakow said.
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Lakow acknowledged there isn’t much change to the stakes program or makeup of the barn areas throughout the region. But he is hopeful the entry boxes will be fuller, with more horses than ever to draw from stabled around the region, a turf course that has been given a bit of a freshening over the past month or so, and a daily purse schedule that will receive a significant boost come January.
“We dropped a few stakes but also added money and helped some of the other races on the program,” Lakow said. “And both our barn areas, here at Gulfstream and up at Payson Park, are fuller than they’ve been since I’ve been here.
“We had a lot of rain locally last month, which meant we were able to take it kind of easy on the turf course as a result, which should return big dividends. The course is in terrific shape right now.”
The opening-day Wait a While should prove a challenge for handicappers with a full field of a dozen juvenile fillies entered to go 7 1/2 furlongs on turf. The race has lured horses from New York, Maryland, and Kentucky to take on a local contingent headed by Bellavinino, It’s Witchcraft, Lemonpeppasteppa, and Ramsey Pond, the second-, third-, fifth-, and seventh-place finishers, respectively, from the one-mile Our Dear Peg Stakes decided over this course a month ago.
The well-traveled Civetta, who will be competing over her fourth different racetrack in as many starts, may prove the tepid favorite for trainer Brendan Walsh off a second-place finish, beaten a neck by the fast-closing Abientot, in the Grade 3 Matron at Aqueduct. The biggest question mark for Civetta, the younger sister of Arlington Million winner Santin, is the added distance as she’ll be stretching out around two turns for the first time.
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“The 7 1/2 furlongs down there should be right up her street,” Walsh predicted. “Her brother won the Turf Classic and Arlington Million, so she should be able to get the trip. She’s doing well, she’s been down there since early October, and has had plenty of time to get adapted and work over the turf at Palm Meadows.”
Saffie Joseph Jr., who is favored to win his fourth consecutive Championship meet training title, will send out both Bellavinino and Ramsey Pond. The former finished full of run while coming up a neck shy of Special Aviator in the Our Dear Peg, while her stablemate is looking to rebound after never menacing as the 3-2 favorite in the race.
Six members of the field come into the main event off victories in their most recent starts, a group that includes impressive last-to-first maiden winner Brutally Honest for trainer Mark Casse, and Smile Pro, a wire-to-wire allowance winner over the Tapeta course earlier this month.
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