HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – A well-matched field of stakes-tested fillies and mares will square off under allowance conditions going 7 1/2 furlong on the turf, weather permitting, in Saturday’s $57,000 headliner at Gulfstream Park.
Time Passage, De Regreso, Golden Canary, and Freedom Speaks are all former stakes winners seeking to recapture their old form in the eighth race on a 10-race card that also includes a $56,000 allowance test going a mile for older horses on the main track.
Time Passage won both the Miss Gracie and Cellars Shiraz within a four-week span for trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. to close out her 3-year-old campaign during the fall of 2023. However, she has not won in eight subsequent tries that included a two-race stint in Mark Casse’s barn at Woodbine during the summer of 2024.
Time Passage will return to the turf after sprinting over the Tapeta in her two most recent starts. She led at every call to notch her two stakes victories and should be a major pace factor stretching back around two turns Saturday.
De Regreso has kept a steady diet of stakes competition since winning an entry-level allowance over the turf here nearly a year ago. She will get a ton of class relief in this spot after finishing a distant last of 11 while making her 2025 debut in the Grade 2 Pegasus World Cup Filly and Mare Turf on Jan. 25.
Golden Canary became a stakes winner in just her second career start when upsetting Woodbine’s Soaring Free Stakes going 6 1/2 furlongs in August of 2023. She has won just once since and enters this race having been idle since a ninth-place finish in an overnight stakes over the Santa Anita turf course last September.
Golden Canary is trained by Casse, who will also send out the graded stakes-placed Crevalle d’Oro, runner-up in the Grade 3 Selene over the synthetic track last summer at Woodbine.
Freedom Speaks won the Music City at Kentucky Downs with trainer Jeremiah Englehart back in the fall of 2022, but she has had many stops and starts to her career ever since. She is currently stabled with trainer Heather Smullen and will be returning to the allowance ranks off a series of appearances in sprint stakes. Those include a sixth-place finish when beaten just two lengths following some early trouble in the Ladies’ Turf Sprint in her local debut Feb. 8.
Freedom Speaks will race without blinkers for just the second time on Saturday.
“She’s doing well. We’re a little limited on options, and this looked like a good spot to see if she’ll stretch out well,” said Smullen. “Two turns, 7 1/2 furlongs at Gulfstream is a little easier than some other two-turn races elsewhere. If you have tactical speed like she has, it should put you in pretty good striking position. As for the blinkers, she ran pretty well in her only other two-turn race without them and I just feel like she’s an older mare who doesn’t really need them at this point in her career.”
Other prominent members of the field include the stakes-placed Candy Gray and trainer Chad Brown’s speedy, stakes-placed Risk Threshold, who’s looking to improve on an 11th-place finish when launching her 2025 campaign in the five-furlong Lightning City earlier this winter at Tampa Bay Downs. Both figure to be part of the early pace scenario.
Catalytic looks to snap streak
Saturday’s co-feature includes the 2024 Florida Derby runner-up Catalytic, who’s trying to snap a frustrating string of second-place finishes dating back to last summer here in the Carry Back Stakes.
Catalytic, who finished a distant second behind Fierceness in the 2024 Florida Derby, has been beaten a head in each of his last three starts, a dubious streak that includes a near-miss going 1 1/16 miles under similar conditions as this in his only start of the season on Feb. 16.
Among Catalytic’s six rivals are Cardinale, idle since finishing far back in the 2024 Risen Star for trainer Todd Fletcher, and the lightly raced, Group 1-placed South American-bred Capitan Danny.
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