April showers may bring May flowers, but May showers bring agita to horsemen and horseplayers alike.
All parties will be hoping the rain subsides long enough for Aqueduct to conduct at least some of its four scheduled turf races on Friday’s nine-race card.
Race 2 is a second-level allowance/optional $75,000 claiming event scheduled for 1 3/8 miles featuring a pair of intriguing runners from trainer Graham Motion.
Atlast, a Group 3 winner in France last year, would be making his U.S. debut in this spot and first start for Motion after two extremely disappointing efforts this year in France for trainer Christophe Ferland. Motion spoke with Ferland last month in Dubai, and the trainer was complimentary about the 4-year-old son of two-time Group 1 winner Farhh owned by Alain and Gerard Wertheimer.
“He was very high on him, a little bit frustrated by him. That’s why they decided to send him over, thinking it might be a good change,” Motion said. “I don’t know [1 3/8 miles] is exactly what he wants to do, but it seemed like a good option. I’d be surprised if it’s not within his scope, even if it’s not what we end up ultimately doing.”
Motion is adding Lasix and removing blinkers from Atlast, who has three works at Fair Hill.
“He came to me fit,” Motion said. “We’ve carried on with him, maybe tried to fresh him up a little bit, but he’s had a couple of works with me.”
Dylan Davis rides Atlast.
Motion also sends out The Ginger Wizard, a half-brother to the Motion-trained Belmont Gold Cup winner The Grey Wizard. The Ginger Wizard is coming off an allowance win over Turfway Park’s synthetic surface on March 29.
“He’s not as far along as The Grey Wizard was. He’s a little immature,” Motion said. “I’ve been quite pleased with how he’s worked since Turfway. We went easy with him a little bit, but this is a good distance for him. I wanted to keep him away from stakes for now if I could.”
Javier Castellano rides The Ginger Wizard.
Catch a Wave, trained by Chad Brown, won a first-level allowance race on July 4 but has not run since. He returns as a first-time gelding.
“I saw a horse getting a little sour at the end of last season, his attitude, so we decided we were going to give him some time anyway to castrate him and he’s come back pretty refreshed,” Brown said.
Masqueparade is not designated as a main track only, but since he’s made all but one of his 27 career starts on dirt, it probably wouldn’t hurt trainer Rob Atras’s feelings if this race comes off the turf.
Rungius, trained by Bruce Levine, is a full brother to turf stakes winners Sweet Rebecca and Sweet Melania as well as two other turf winners. This will Rungius’s first start on turf after going 4 for 16 on dirt.
Cyber Ninja, second at Laurel last out in his first start for trainer Jack Fisher, completes the field on turf.
If on dirt, Leading Contender and Strapped can run. Strapped was third in a similar condition as this on May 4.
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