Save for the Longacres Mile, where post-time favorite Arrowthegreat prevailed, Sunday at Emerald Downs was filled with upsets, which led to a 50-cent pick four returning $27,835. This Friday, the pick six carryover from Sunday is $12,382, while the pick five carryover is a record $78,841.
Snatching that bag will be a challenging chore. Still, there are some horses worth recommending.
In the fifth race, Always On Cay returns to Howie Gibson’s barn off a $10,000 claim and promptly drops in class to the $5,000 level for a trainer who guided him to a win and a third-place finish on July 3 and June 20, respectively. Gibson has a 26 percent strike rate first off the claim, and the 4-year-old’s best race could get the job done. Good Lovin, positioned just to his outside in post 3, may have finally figured things out in his last race and also warrants a look.
Union Coach and Grease Missle seem like solid plays in the sixth, an $8,000 claiming race for fillies and mares at the same six-furlong distance. Grease Missle will be poised to break like her name suggests from the outside post, while Union Coach boasts some tactical speed and should benefit from another class drop.
It’s hard to trust any of the 10 entrants in race 7, another six-furlong race for fillies and mares with a $5,000 claiming tag, but if you’re comfortable tossing Luna Linda’s local debut, she looks like the one to beat. She raced in far classier company last year in Northern California before that circuit went kaput and certainly needed a race off a layoff of more than a year.
In race 8, a $20,000 claiming race at a mile, Surprsinglyperfect is worth using despite a flat July 26 effort that snapped a four-race winning streak, all at this distance. On his best day, Rich Gold is probably a notch below Surprsinglyperfect, but he has a similar stalking style and seems best positioned to pick up the pieces should Surprsinglyperfect turn in another dud.
Good luck sorting out race 9, a $5,000 maiden-claiming affair at six furlongs. Shiny Orb finished a distant sixth after breaking slowly and getting bumped in his only start, but the Beyer Speed Figure (36) he earned for that race actually stacks up well with his rivals here, and he runs for a solid barn. Daddy’s Quest is winless in seven races but also starts for a shrewd trainer and is one of two horses in the field of 10 to have cleared a Beyer of 50.
Cancellation sparks debate
Speaking of Surprsinglyperfect, the 11-year-old gelding drew post 5 in what was originally carded as an eight-horse race on Aug. 15. But with as much as an inch of rain in the forecast, Emerald Downs officials canceled Friday’s entire seven-race card the day before and rescheduled those races for this week, complete with a redraw. Hence, Surprsinglyperfect will now break from the rail in a nine-horse field in race 8 this Friday – a tougher proposition than before, given that he prefers to stalk from the outside for trainer Justin Evans.
“This card should have just been entered back for Friday, not redrawn, not changing post positions,” Evans said. “When you retake entries on it, you expose the race.”
Conceding that “nothing’s perfect” when it comes to rescheduling races, track president Phil Ziegler said, “What if somebody would have dropped out and the race wouldn’t have gone? Then they would have said we should have opened it up.”
Evans and Ziegler also are at odds over whether last Friday’s races should have been canceled in the first place.
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“All everybody talked about the night before and the next day was how ridiculous it was, the cancellation,” remarked Evans, who said he voiced his concerns to Ziegler. “This track is made for rain. That morning [Friday] was the best this track’s been. There hasn’t been enough water on this track.”
While Ziegler acknowledged that Emerald’s dirt surface handles rain well, he said, “I live 10 minutes from the track. It was pouring during the entire race time. The decision to cancel was, in my 11 years, one of the easiest decisions I’ve ever made. This is the world these days. We don’t take chances. Our priority is always going to be safety first.”
◗ Fortunately, the track and the skies above were in great condition for the Longacres Mile and five undercard stakes on Sunday. Paid attendance was a robust 6,002, and the track set a single-day record for betting handle with $3,305,806, which was just shy of the state record of $3,339,087 set in 1992 at Longacres.
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