Saturday’s $1 million Runhappy Travers Stakes is one of the most prestigious races in North America and is the annual centerpiece of Saratoga Race Course’s elite summer meet. This year’s 151st running has a special distinction on the racing calendar due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Tag: Racing
Jones Loaded With Street Band, Istan Council In Sunday’s Groupie Doll Stakes
Street Band was one of the country's top 3-year-old fillies last year. Trainer Larry Jones, also her co-owner and co-breeder, is still trying to see how that translates into her stature as a 4-year-old.
Just matching last year is a lofty standard, with Street Band earning more than $1 million in 2019, including victories in the Grade 2 Fair Grounds Oaks, Grade 3 Indiana Oaks and Parx's Grade 1 Cotillion, where her 2 1/4-length triumph remains the sensational filly Guarana's only defeat.
Street Band should get some relief in the ferocity of competition when she runs in Sunday's $100,000 Groupie Doll Stakes at Ellis Park, one of five stakes on the RUNHAPPY Ellis Park Derby card. Street Band is 0 for 3 in 2020, all against top-flight company: a very close third in the Grade 3 Houston Ladies Classic, a fading fourth in the Grade 2 Azeri Stakes and a rallying fourth in the Grade 1 Apple Blossom in April in her last start.
“I think she had reached her peak early fall last year, late summer,” Jones said. “She was really doing well. She's doing just as well now, but she just has not looked like (she's) doing better. She looks like maybe she matured early, and we have not been as busy with her, and some of it due to the COVID.”
Street Band drew post 12 as the Groupie Doll attracted 15 fillies and mares, with the three “also-eligibles” requiring defections in order to make the capacity field of 12. The Groupie Doll goes off as race 9 on the 10-race card capped by the RUNHAPPY Ellis Park Derby. The sensational betting card is dominated by full fields, with TVG providing live on-site coverage.
Jones is hoping the Groupie Doll is a steppingstone to Keeneland's Grade 1 Spinster. With the Breeders' Cup also at Keeneland this year, the major objective is getting Street Band back into the $2 million Distaff, a race in which she was eighth last year.
“We've only had three starts,” Jones said of 2020. “The Houston Ladies Classic, she had a wide trip, and I thought that was a really good race for her. In the Azeri, the track was really sloppy and I didn't think she ran her best race by any means. (Kentucky Oaks winner) Serengeti Empress got on an easy lead and just kept going. She's running good. I don't know if she's any better at 4 than she was at 3.”
Jones is known for being forthright anyway. But he also can speak candidly about Street Band as a co-owner with wife Cindy, Ray Francis of Henderson and with minority interests owned by Medallion Racing and MyRaceHorse Stable.
“I have as much on the line as they do,” Jones said. “So my partners have been very agreeable to do what we're doing. So it's worked out well.
“… The Groupie Doll is the premier race here,” the long-time Henderson resident continued. “Not knowing two months ago how the COVID was going to be doing, we just decided to stay home, try not to do a lot of outside traveling and maybe getting ourselves and our barn in jeopardy of getting quarantined. This is always a race we have on our radar for our fillies. I've run some Grade 1 winners in this race. It's a good race, and I love racing at Ellis Park on their track.”
Indeed, after finishing second in the 2012 Groupie Doll (then known as the Gardenia), Jones sent Joyous Victory to California, where she was second in the Grade 1 Zenyatta before the next spring returning for victory in the Grade 1 Santa Margarita. Groupie Doll herself finished third in the 2013 Gardenia before winning her second straight Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint and female sprint championship. (Groupie Doll also won the 2011 Gardenia as a 3-year-old.)
Jockey Sophie Doyle, who has ridden Street Band for the past 13 of her 16 career starts, comes in from Iowa's Prairie Meadows to ride. She says she sees the signs that Street Band at 4 is the same as Street Band at 3. One thing that is different this year is that Doyle switched circuits and hasn't been able to be on the filly in most of her timed workouts.
“She's always been performing and trying hard,” Doyle said of the Street Band, the jockey's first Grade 1 winner. “… Street Band is just incredible. I've been so fortunate and blessed to come across a filly like her. We've been together from the very beginning. The past two years, it's been a development with each race we've gone into. I think it's been an important key for both of us that we've been able to progress together so well. She's highlighted my career in so many ways.”
Jones has another Groupie Doll contender in Istan Council, who last year defeated older horses by 10 3/4 lengths to win an Ellis Park allowance race.
“She really does well on this track,” Jones said. “And I love the fact that going a mile here is not a two-turn race. It's maybe a turn and three-quarters. We know she wants to go a little bit longer than the six furlongs we've been able to find to keep her at the one-turn. We haven't been able to find a true one-turn mile race for her. But she's coming into this race very well.”
Both fillies come into the race without their final scheduled workout, with Jones calling them off Tuesday because of the muddy track.
“We'll have to go into the race just off of gallops,” he said in a text update. “Uncharted waters for both of them.”
In addition to the Groupie Doll and $200,000 RUNHAPPY Ellis Park Derby, the other stakes Sunday are the $100,000 RUNHAPPY Juvenile,$100,000 RUNHAPPY Debutante and the $100,000 RUNHAPPY Audubon Oaks.
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Wesley Ward Ships Live Chance To Del Mar For Saturday’s Best Pal
When Wesley Ward ships one in – standby. Mr. Ward does not come to play, be it anywhere in the U.S., or Europe, too. The man fires bullets from coast to coast and across the ocean.
Eight times already he's rung the stakes bell at Del Mar and Saturday he's aiming for another gong with a quick 2-year-old colt named Roderick, who ran away and hid from a straight maiden field at Belmont Park in New York on June 21 in his lone outing and – in a lineup that lacks a stakes winner – looks like a solid favorite for the 50th edition of the Best Pal Stakes.
The race, a six-panel spin for juveniles that carries Grade II status and a $150,000 purse, has drawn a field of seven runners and Roderick has drawn post No. 4 and Del Mar's leading rider, Flavien Prat. Ward, the former Eclipse Award winning jockey (top apprentice, 1984), is likely to watch his charge run from his headquarters in Lexington as his west coast guy – trainer Blake Heap – saddles his Into Mischief colt Saturday for his ownership group that goes under the name Breeze Easy.
The local hope with the best chance to outfoot the youthful invader appears to be Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners' Herd Immunity, a Union Rags offspring who won at first asking in a straight maiden race at Santa Anita in early June, then was shipped to Churchill Downs where he ran third in the Bashford Manor Stakes on June 27. For his go in the Best Pal, the Peter Miller-trained colt will be partnered by Abel Cedillo and break from post No. 5.
Here's the full field (in post position order with riders and morning line odds) for the 2-year-old headliner that is a key prep to the meet's top event for the juvenile set, the Grade I, $250,000 Del Mar Futurity on closing day, Labor Day, September 7:
Strauss, Suarez or Tsukashima's Sonic Brees (Umberto Rispoli, 6-1); Reddam Racing's Ambivalent (Mario Gutierrez, 5-1); Kaleem Shah's Schnell (Ruben Fuentes, 12-1); Roderick; Herd Immunity; Drakos or Hanson's Weston (Drayden Van Dyke, 5-1), and Altamira Racing Stable's Girther (Ricky Gonzalez, 6-1).
Weston, who is trained by Ryan Hanson, broke his maiden in good fashion at Santa Anita on June 21. The Kentucky-bred gelding by the War Front stallion Hit It a Bomb, has had three solid works at Del Mar since and gets his chance to step up a notch Saturday.
Girther, also trained by Peter Miller, scored his initial victory in his second start here at Del Mar on July 11, hanging on for a nose tally at five furlongs. He's a Florida-bred colt by the Giant's Causeway stallion Brody's Cause.
The Best Pal will go as the sixth race on an 11-race card that also features the Grade II, $150,000 Yellow Ribbon Handicap for fillies and mares. First post Saturday is at 2 p.m.
The post Wesley Ward Ships Live Chance To Del Mar For Saturday’s Best Pal appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
2020 Runhappy Travers Stakes at a Glance
For the longest time, the Runhappy Travers Stakes has been considered a Derby, specifically the “Mid-Summer Derby.” Yet in a world battling COVID-19, the 2020 Travers is actually more like the first Saturday in May Kentucky Derby than the actual Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve in September.
