Indian Summer | Horse Racing Free Tips

Hat Creek Racing's undefeated Averly Jane tops a field of 10 2-year-olds entered Thursday for Sunday's fourth running of the $200,000 Indian Summer (L) Presented by Keeneland Select going 5½ furlongs on the turf.

The Indian Summer, a Breeders' Cup Challenge race that offers the winner a fees-paid berth into the $1 million Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint (G2) at Del Mar on Nov. 5, will go as the eighth race Sunday with a 4:44 p.m. ET post time.

Trained by Wesley Ward, who won the 2019 Indian Summer with the filly Kimari, Averly Jane is one of two fillies in the race for Ward along with Gregory Kaufman's Kaufymaker.

Averly Jane has won her three starts by a combined 19¼ lengths with stakes victories coming in the Kentucky Juvenile at Churchill Downs and the Skidmore at Saratoga. She won at first asking at Keeneland as did Kaufymaker, who enters Sunday's race off a third-place finish in the Global Tote Juvenile Sprint (L) at Kentucky Downs last month.

Tyler Gaffalione has the call on Averly Jane from post seven, while Irad Ortiz Jr. will pilot Kaufymaker from post two. The two entrants are the race's lone fillies.

Trainer Mark Casse, who sent out Strike Silver to win the inaugural Indian Summer in 2018, is back this year with Canadian invader Diamond City.

Owned by D. J. Stable, Diamond City has won one of three starts at Woodbine with the victory coming in his most recent start in the Ontario Racing Stakes (L) on Sept. 19 going 5 furlongs. Diamond City will start from post position 10 and be ridden by Julien Leparoux.

The field for the Indian Summer, with riders and weights from the inside, is: Sonnyisnotsofunny (Luis Saez, 118 pounds), Kaufymaker (Ortiz Jr., 115), Detroit City (Adam Beschizza, 118), Pure Panic (Flavien Prat, 118), Big Boss Ben (Reylu Gutierrez, 118), Bonus Appreciation (Brian Hernandez Jr., 118), Averly Jane (Gaffalione, 117), Roman Poet (Florent Geroux, 118), Circle Back Jack (Robby Albarado, 118), Diamond City (Leparoux, 120).

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Trainer Valorie Lund recognized Bodenheimer as untapped talent the first time she saw him. On Oct. 4, the Washington-bred confirmed her confidence by winning the Indian Summer (L) Presented by Keeneland Select, a “Win and You're In” for the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint (G1) here Nov. 6 while becoming her first Keeneland winner.

“Overall, he was a really good individual,” Lund said of that first encounter. “He favors the (broodmare sire) A.P. Indy line when I looked at his head, neck and shoulders. He was stout as a yearling but sleeker now as a racehorse.”

Another attraction for Lund was the colt's Grade 2-winning sire, Atta Boy Roy, a Washington-bred who Lund had trained and exercised throughout his career and raced in the 2010 Breeders' Cup Sprint (G1) at Churchill Downs. Bodenheimer's dam is stakes winner and stakes producer Beautiful Daniele, an $800,000 Keeneland September Yearling Sale graduate whose pedigree page includes champion Countess Diana.

Lund had the final bid on the yearling Bodenheimer for $27,000 at a Thoroughbred auction in Washington. She said he soon stood out from the crowd in his early training.

“You can pick out the good ones by their action,” she said. “He was a beautiful mover and when the 2-year-olds started doing their early breezes, he showed he was really fast. We thought so highly of him that we purchased his dam privately from Kentucky before he made his first start.”

Owned by Lund's mother, Marylou Holden, and sister, Kristin Boice, Bodenheimer is named for Boice's husband, Entz Bodenheimer Boice. Both are known as “Bo.”

On July 29, the equine Bo sailed to an 11¼-length victory on turf at Canterbury Park in his career debut. He then captured the Aug. 22 Prairie Gold Juvenile Stakes on dirt at Prairie Meadows. He checked in fifth in the Kentucky Downs Juvenile Sprint on Sept. 12 in his third career start.

Formerly based at Turf Paradise in Arizona each winter and racing in the summer at such tracks as Canterbury, Lund has relocated to Kentucky. She now trains Bodenheimer at Ashwood Training Center, 10 miles northeast of Lexington. She and the colt will commute to Keeneland for his turf workouts in advance of the Breeders' Cup.

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