Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Prospect Park can boost stock
ARCADIA, Calif. – For two years, Prospect Park has carried a lofty reputation, the consequence of a second-place finish in the Grade 2 San Felipe Stakes and a fourth in the Santa Anita Derby in 2015.
Since then, Prospect Park has been 4-1 or less in all 10 of his starts, including a third in the Grade 2 Del Mar Derby at 3-10 and a win at even-money in an optional claimer on turf at Santa Anita on March 9.
The latter race gives trainer Clifford Sise hope that Prospect Park can win the second stakes of his career in the Grade 2 Californian Stakes at 1 1/8 miles on dirt Saturday at Santa Anita.
This is certainly the right time to try such a race.
Arrogate, the leading older horse in the nation, is not part of the field for the Californian, having won the $10 million Dubai World Cup in the United Arab Emirates last month. Without Arrogate, the $200,000 Californian lacks a standout, which gives Sise more confidence about the chances for the 5-year-old Prospect Park.
“He’s doing really well,” Sise said Wednesday. “I don’t think the surface matters. He’s run some good races on the dirt, too.”
Owned by Marty and Pam Wygod, Prospect Park was fourth in the Grade 2 San Pasqual Stakes on a wetfast track Jan. 1, a race Sise summarily dismissed. “He didn’t like that,” he said. Sise said Prospect Park has overcome a pesky illness that arose at inopportune times during his 3-year-old year.
“Two of his races you can throw out completely,” he said. “We were fighting mucus and stuff in the Del Mar Derby and Santa Anita Derby. He wasn’t at the top of his game at all. But now he’s over all that he had when he was younger.”
Prospect Park has won 4 of 17 starts and earned $515,770. He was second in the Grade 2 Los Alamitos Derby on dirt and won the Grade 3 La Jolla Handicap on turf at Del Mar in consecutive starts in the summer of 2015.
Sise said Flavien Prat, the leading rider at the track’s winter-spring meeting, will ride Prospect Park for the first time in the Californian. Kent Desormeaux has ridden Prospect Park in 11 of his last 14 races but is booked to ride Follow Me Crev on Saturday. Follow Me Crev was third in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Handicap on March 11.
Other expected runners are Collected, Cupid, Prime Attraction, and Texas Ryano.
The Grade 3 San Juan Capistrano Stakes at about 1 3/4 miles on turf also will be run Saturday and is not expected to have a large field. The historic race, the track’s longest turf stakes, is led by Syntax, runner-up in the Grade 2 San Luis Rey Stakes at 1 1/2 miles on turf March 25.
Del Mar to limit stalls
Del Mar will limit stall allocations to a maximum of 40 runners per trainer at its summer meeting, the track announced Tuesday in a letter to owners and trainers.
The plan is part of an effort to reduce backstretch capacity from approximately 2,100 horses last summer to closer to 1,850 to 1,900 this year, according to Tom Robbins, Del Mar’s vice president in charge of racing.
Robbins said the decision puts Del Mar closer in line with capacity at Santa Anita and will ease traffic on the racetrack during morning training. He said eight to 10 trainers each have had more than 40 stalls or pens at Del Mar and will be affected by the decision.
“We have declared we will not have as many horses on the property as we have in the past,” Robbins said Wednesday. “We want to be closer to Santa Anita. That’s part of our initiative of cutting back. To cut back, you need to do it across the board and start at the top and work your way down.
“We’re trying to approach the problem in a fair and equitable fashion. It’s a number we hope is more manageable.”
Robbins said the trainers with the largest stables already house horses at offtrack venues such as Los Alamitos or the San Luis Rey Downs training center and can redirect runners to those venues.
Los Alamitos has the capacity for approximately 850 Thoroughbreds who race on the Southern California circuit in addition to housing horses for the track’s nighttime meeting for Quarter Horses and lowerlevel Thoroughbreds. San Luis Rey Downs can house approximately 500 horses.
The Del Mar summer meeting runs July 19 to Sept. 4. The track will host the Breeders’ Cup races on Nov. 3-4 for the first time. Stabling is not as much of an issue at the track’s autumn meeting because many Southern California stables remain at Santa Anita.