Giocoso has found his best stride in 3-year-old turf stakes this summer and fall and scored his second graded stakes win in this division on Saturday evening at Churchill Downs. But trainer Keith Desormeaux hopes to show the strapping colt’s versatility in the coming year, with new goals to reach for.
“We’d like to get a graded stakes on dirt – that’s the next goal,” Desormeaux said post-race, after Giocoso edged Chapman’s Peak to win the Grade 3 Commonwealth Turf on Saturday.
In two stakes tries on dirt, Giocoso was third in the Grade 3 Iroquois Stakes in September 2024 at Churchill Downs and 12th in the Grade 2 Risen Star earlier this year at Fair Grounds.
After regrouping from his spring campaign, Giocoso has begun to deliver on his athleticism. He won the Grade 2 Secretariat Stakes in August at Colonial Downs, finished second in the Gun Runner Stakes at Kentucky Downs, and was third in the Grade 3 Bryan Station Stakes at Keeneland. His victory Saturday pushed his earnings to $1,119,971.
“That’s nice, especially for only a $75,000 purchase price,” Desormeaux said.
Giocoso, who Desormeaux purchased for that modest price on behalf of Rocker O Ranch at the 2023 Keeneland September yearling sale, is from a female family that seems purely turf. His dam, a daughter of Australian legend Fastnet Rock, is from the immediate family of several European sires. However, Giocoso is by the red-hot young sire Not This Time – who himself won the Iroquois before finishing second in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile – a versatile source of top-level runners on both surfaces. His top dirt runners include Eclipse Award champion Epicenter; Grade/Group 1 winners Just One Time, Princess Noor, and Sibelius; the marathon runner Next; and the talented 3-year-old Magnitude, who runs Friday in the Clark Stakes.
Trainer Brad Cox, meanwhile, was pleased with the effort by Chapman’s Peak, runner-up to Giocoso by a head with a career-best speed figure in his stakes debut. The Godolphin homebred – by another versatile sire in Quality Road and out of the Grade 1-winning turf mare Dickinson – followed an off-the-turf effort in his season debut with back-to-back turf wins prior to the Commonwealth.
“He ran hard and it was a good effort against stakes company for the first time,” Cox told track publicity immediately after the race. “He ran well.”
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