‘He Did It So Easily’: Allowance Win Puts Inveigled On Road To Florida Derby

After viewing the manner in which Mark Grier's Inveigled dominated an optional claiming allowance for 2-year-olds at Gulfstream Park Dec. 9, trainer Jane Cibelli had reason to dream big for the gelded son of Enticed.

Inveigled is scheduled to embark on the road to the $1 million Curlin Florida Derby (G1) in the $150,000 Mucho Macho Man on Monday's New Year's Day program at Gulfstream Park.

“I don't particularly like coming back in three weeks, but I also don't want to go right into graded company,” said Cibelli about opting a somewhat conservative route with Inveigled. “So, I thought this was a good start. If he runs well or wins, we could look at graded races.”

The Mucho Macho Man, a mile stakes for newly turned 3-year-olds that will co-headline Monday's program with the $150,000 Cash Run for 3-year-old fillies, will be followed on the road to the March 30 Florida Derby, by the $250,000 Holy Bull (G3) Feb. 3, and the $400,000 Fountain of Youth (G2) March 2.

“We'll take one race at a time. I just didn't want to throw him into graded company right off the bat. I would like a bit more time, but I felt like in the last race, he did it so easily,” Cibelli said. “There's no reason not to run. We pulled his blood, and his blood is as good as blood gets. We scoped him. I've given him every reason to not run, but he's been just great.”

Inveigled has been installed as the 9-5 morning-line favorite in a field of eight 2-year-olds following his eye-catching score at a mile three weeks ago. The Indiana-bred gelding stalked the early pace before making a three-wide move to the lead and drawing clear to win going away by 4 ¾ lengths under Irad Ortiz Jr.

“The way Irad rode him last time, it was faultless,” Cibelli said. “I had a feeling he might go to the lead, going short to long, because he showed speed going short. Irad is just brilliant. He drops his hands, drops them off the pace. He's just a fantastic rider.”

Inveigled debuted with a troubled third in his Sept. 15 debut at Pimlico before graduating by eight lengths in a 5 ½-furlong maiden special weight race at Laurel Park while equipped with blinkers for the first time.

“This first time he ran, I was a little disappointed, but the blinkers really made a difference,” said Cibelli, who has awarded the return mount Ortiz, the defending Championship Meet titlist.

In his race prior to his Gulfstream score, Inveigled was involved in a protracted duel while racing on the inside in six-furlong James F. Lewis III Stakes at Laurel, holding on gamely to finish second by a neck.

WinStar Farm LLC and Siena Farm LLC's Otello is rated second on the morning line at 3-1 on the basis of a promising debut score at Aqueduct Nov. 4. The Christophe Clement-trained son of Curlin rallied from fifth to get up by a neck while going a one-turn mile.

Luis Saez is scheduled to ride Otello for the first time Monday.

Qatar Racing LLC and Hunter Valley Farm's First World War will make his stakes debut on dirt, following a strong runner-up finish in an optional claiming allowance over Churchill Downs main track Nov. 9. The Brendan Walsh-trained colt had run twice previously on turf, winning his debut at Kentucky Downs Sept. 13 and finishing a close-up fourth in the Bourbon (G2) at Keeneland.

Tyler Gaffalione has the return call on the son of War Front, who is rated third at 7-2 on the morning line.

AMO Racing USA's Boy Magic, undefeated in two starts, is slated to make his stakes debut in the Mucho Macho Man. The son of Good Magic won at first asking by 4 ¼ lengths in a six-furlong maiden special weight race at Delaware Park Aug. 24 before coming back a month later at Pimlico to win an optional claiming allowance over Catahoula Moon, who won the Maryland Million Nursery in his next start.

Paco Lopez, who was aboard for the first two starts, has the return mount on the Jorge Delgado-trained Kentucky-bred colt.

Morplay Racing's No More Time enters the Mucho Macho Man off an impressive debut victory at the one-turn distance at Gulfstream Oct. 23. The Jose D'Angelo-trained son of Not This Time, who finished second in his debut, attended the pace on the backstretch before pulling away to a 6 ¾-length victory.

Jose Ortiz is scheduled to ride No More Time for the first time Monday.

Holly Crest Farm's Sea Streak, who was a beaten-favorite second behind Inveigled Dec. 9, returns in the Mucho Macho Man. Prior to his Gulfstream debut, the Eddie Owens Jr.-trained son of Sea Wizard scored a 4 ¾-length maiden special weight victory at Aqueduct.

Luca Panici has the call on the New Jersey-bred colt.

Anne-33 LLC's Orb Alpha and Donald Ming's Everdoit round out the field.

The post ‘He Did It So Easily’: Allowance Win Puts Inveigled On Road To Florida Derby appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.

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Race For Winningest Horse Comes Down To Final Weekend Of ’23

North America's winningest Thoroughbred in terms of victories this year will have 10 wins, but the final weekend of 2023 will determine if the Midwest-based gelding Fayette Warrior (Exchange Rate) ends up alone atop the leaderboard or if he has to share the honor with two nine-win rivals in the mid-Atlantic who could tie the mark either Dec. 30 or 31.

The 7-year-old Fayette Warrior, who sports a lifetime record of 19-11-7 from 71 starts with $241,772 in earnings, has topped the continent since his last victory at Columbus against starter-allowance company Oct. 21. He then finished second Oct. 29, also at the Nebraska track, before owner/trainer Troy Bethke gave him a break to prepare for a 2024 campaign.

With Troy's son, Scott Bethke, riding Fayette Warrior in all 18 starts this year, the pair also posed for winner's circle photos at Energy Downs (three times), plus Fonner Park, Sweetwater County Fair, and Wyoming Downs (twice each).

“He's a little bitty horse. He probably barely reaches 15 hands. Just a small-statured horse, but he's got a big heart, and he likes to run,” Troy Bethke told TDN. “Every time we lead him up there, he gives you 100%. He's a spunky, cocky little guy; a good-looking rascal. He likes to train, likes to race–just a good little horse.

“We only had a couple of races where he didn't run great this year, and both of them he got in trouble,” Bethke said, noting that Fayette Warrior only finished out of the money three times. “One was on the backside where he got pinched into the rail, and then another one it was really muddy and he just didn't seem to handle the track that day. Scott's kind of grown attached to him, and in that particular race I think he kind of took care of him a little bit.

A $90,000 KEEJAN purchase for Calumet Farm back in 2017, Fayette Warrior debuted for trainer Wesley Ward at Saratoga in 2018 (seventh at the MSW level). But he won his next start at Kentucky Downs by 4 1/4 lengths, and was then was fourth and third in listed stakes at Belmont Park and Laurel Park

After that, Fayette Warrior drifted downward in class to circuits in Kentucky, Oklahoma, Nebraska, Iowa and Minnesota while switching stables 13 times before finally landing with Bethke.

“I claimed him two years ago. We ran him at Canterbury, then in Nebraska and Colorado,” Bethke said. “This last summer, we started in Nebraska, then a gal who was an assistant for me went out to Wyoming and ran that circuit out there. Then he came back to Nebraska.

“We were trying to put him in races where he would run well. We knew that he was doing well, up towards the top [of the North American leaderboard],” Bethke said.

No matter the level of racing, achieving 10 victories “is a lot of wins” for any horse, Bethke said.

“He'll be coming back next year,” Bethke said. “He had a pretty hard, long campaign, so we stopped on him. I've got a little place in Minnesota, so we've got him turned out at the house here right now.

Anthony Farrior | Jim McCue

Reached by phone Dec. 29, Bethke said he wasn't aware there were two other horses entered this weekend to potentially tie Fayette Warrior.

Both of those runners are trained by Anthony Farrior, who told TDN in a separate phone interview that it wasn't his intent to go after the winningest horse title.

“It's just how the races came up,” said Farrior, whose stable primarily competes in Maryland, West Virginia and Pennsylvania.

Farrior will run the 4-year-old filly Divine Fashion (Divining Rod) in the third race Saturday at Mahoning Valley, where she's the 7-5 morning-line favorite for a $5,000 starter-allowance.

He's also got the 3-year-old gelding Uncaptured Storm (Uncaptured) on the also-eligible list in the first race at Laurel on Sunday as the 5-2 morning-line choice. That's a $25,000 claimer open to non-winners of three (any age) or straight 3-year-olds (regardless of the number of victories).

“Uncaptured Storm, me and [trainer Mario] Serey claimed him back and forth [twice each this year]. He just seemed to get better as a grew up as a 3-year-old,” Farrior said, adding that being able to take advantage of a condition that pits a nine-time winner against horses who haven't broken through the three-lifetime level is “a little advantage.”

Divine Fashion is going to have to prove she's able to win on the road. All nine of her wins this season have come at Charles Town. The two times she's shipped elsewhere in 2023 (both to Laurel), she's lost.

“She just loves Charles Town,” Farrior said. “She always shows up and runs her race. When you get a nice starter filly at Charles Town [the condition goes back to] two years from the date, so that helps out a lot. She'd probably have won more if my other filly wasn't beating her earlier in the year.”

Farrior was referring to Dulcimer Dame (Mineshaft) a 6-year-old who won seven straight before the month of March ended but has been 0-for-5 since. She'll aim for win No. 8 on Sunday at Laurel.

“They're just sound horses and you can keep them running. So it's worked out great,” Farrior said.

All three of those Farrior-trained winners are owned, either in whole or in partnership, by Richard Burnsworth, whose record as a solo owner in 2023 is an impressive 79-for-298 (26%).

Beverly Park | Coady Photography

“He likes to win. He doesn't mess with me, and he lets me put them in where they belong,” Farrior said of his client.

One other gelding with nine wins, the 6-year-old Never Compromise (Graydar), most recently ran third at Charles Town Dec. 16 and won't make a subsequent start before the year is out. He's owned by Robert Cole Jr. and trained by Stephen Murdock.

In 2022, the continent's winningest horse was Beverly Park (Munnings) with 14 victories. He came back to win four this year.

Between 2012 and 2021, the North American leaderboard was topped by horses who won between eight (in the pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign) and 12 times.

You have to go back to 2011 to find a truly freakish outlier, which was when the Cole-owned starter-allowance stalwart Rapid Redux ran the table with a 19-for-19 record for trainer David Wells.

The post Race For Winningest Horse Comes Down To Final Weekend Of ’23 appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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In His New York Swan Song, Golden Oldie Greeley And Ben Looks For 26th Career Win In Gravesend

Forty-two starts into his career and with 25 wins, Greeley and Ben (Greeley's Conquest) is in top form as he will look to close out 2023 with a win over four rivals in Saturday's Gravesend S. at Aqueduct. It will, however, be his last ever start at an NYRA track, where horses who are 10 or older are not allowed to compete. That's fine with his connections. They can race him next year at just about anywhere else and are confident that the story of one of the true iron horses in the sport will continue for some time.

“I think he's a long way from being done,” said trainer Horacio De Paz.

It's easy to see why De Paz doesn't think that age has caught up with Greeley and Ben and why he'll be bringing the horse back off of just one week's rest in the Gravesend. Greeley and Ben won last year's GIII Fall Highweight H. at the advanced age of eight and, after a layoff of nearly 12 months, has come back running this year. After finishing sixth in an allowance race at Laurel, he's won two straight, including the Dec. 23 Dave's Friend, also at Laurel.

Greeley and Ben began his career racing for trainer John Ortiz and won six times before being claimed for just $10,000 on March 7, 2021 by Karl Broberg. He won 13 of 17 starts for Broberg before he was claimed again and wound up in the barn of David Jacobson. He made three starts for Jacobson, his last in a 2022 $40,000 claimer at Saratoga. It was there that he caught the attention of his current owner, Darryl Abramowitz.

“His age didn't bother me,” Abramowitz said. “This game is about dreams and taking chances. I thought that for $40,000 the worst-case scenario was we'd have to drop him into a $20,000 claimer and we'd win and get our money back. You only live once.”

So Abramowitz spent the $40,000 to claim a horse who was eight at the time and, at least according to his Beyer numbers, was starting to slow down. Little did he know that the future for the gelding would include four wins in his next seven starts and two stakes wins, including his first graded stakes victory in the Fall Highweight.

“He's a combination of Mike Tyson and Cal Ripken,” Abramowitz said. “He's an iron horse and he's a fighter.”

Greeley and Ben | Coglianese

After winning the Fall Highweight, Greeley and Ben disappeared, but that would not prove to be the end of his career.

“He's an old war horse and as time has gone on he has come up with a few leg issues,” Abramowitz said. “Nothing serious. He just needed the time to heal up. Would other people spend 352 days on the shelf and spend all that money while he wasn't racing? I don't think so. I could have brought him back earlier, but if we did, we'd have to have dropped into a lower level of claimers. We coaxed him along and gave him the time that was necessary. He's sound and he's solid right now. With the way he's going he could keep running for another two years. This guy loves to run. He just thrives on it.”

Abramowitz initially had the horse with Jeffrey Englehart and then moved him into the barn of Faith Wilson for the Fall Highweight. The next move was to give him to De Paz, who has had him since September. Greeley and Ben could do no better than to finish sixth in his return race, but De Paz was not discouraged.

“When we got him he had to build back the foundation that he had lost,” the trainer said. “He carries good flesh, so we had to work past that. In his first race back, we figured we'd give him a race rather than just breezing him. We thought a race would do him more good than breezing him every week. That first run showed he still wanted to compete. He just got tired.”

Twenty-two days later, he won the allowance and followed that up with the win in the Dave's Friend, which upped his career earnings to $981,138. After that start, De Paz and Abramowitz started searching for a race. On whether they should enter him in the Gravesend, it came down to the question of, why not?

“That we're running here doesn't have anything to do with the rules in New York,” Abramowitz said. “We were watching nominations for this race and knew there would be a small field and I didn't think the race would be that difficult. At Laurel, he ran three solid furlongs. It was like having a spectacular workout. For the first three furlongs he was in the back just enjoying himself and having a good time. I knew he was going good and Horacio told me he's better than ever and is going extremely good. We looked at all the factors, like the $150,000 purse, and decided to give it a go.”

Abramowitz is so bullish on the gelding's future that he said if the horse runs well in the Gravesend he will consider sending him to the Middle East–Saudi Arabia and Dubai.

First though, they have to get past the Gravesend. On paper, Greeley and Ben is stepping up in class and could have a tough time in the six-furlong stakes. But Abramowitz doesn't think that will be the case.

“He fits in this race and I think he might surprise a lot of people,” the owner said.

Win or lose, Greeley and Ben's place in the sport has already been assured. Where else can you find an active 9-year-old who is still at the top of his game and has won more races than he has lost?

“It's a tremendous story,” De Paz said. “He's run at all these different racetracks and has run for different trainers and he's been honest for everyone who has had him. He's just a special horse.”

The post In His New York Swan Song, Golden Oldie Greeley And Ben Looks For 26th Career Win In Gravesend appeared first on TDN | Thoroughbred Daily News | Horse Racing News, Results and Video | Thoroughbred Breeding and Auctions.

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