Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Casse loaded with stakes fillies
Trainer Mark Casse has some sorting to do with an excellent group of 2-year-old fillies.
Road to Victory won the Grade 2 Golden Rod on Saturday at Churchill Downs, adding to the strong roster of young female talent in the farreaching Casse string. Road to Victory is headed for Florida, with the Gulfstream Oaks and the Kentucky Oaks atop the list of her 2018 targets. Wonder Gadot, a troubled sixth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, ships from Florida to New York for the Demoiselle Stakes this Saturday at Aqueduct.
Then there’s Win the War, the War Front filly whose 11 1/4-length victory Nov. 4 in the Glorious Song Stakes at Woodbine produced a 94 Beyer Speed Figure, the highest figure by a 2-year-old filly in North America this year. Miss Mo Momentum, a 3 3/4-length winner (75 Beyer) of a Nov. 16 Churchill Downs allowance race could go to the Starlet Stakes in California, but also could wind up at Fair Grounds.
The Fair Grounds series definitely is in the cards for still another talented Casse filly, Heavenly Love, whose grand showing winning the Grade 1 Alcibiades Stakes at Keeneland was followed by a total clunker in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies. The 7-2 second choice in the Juvenile Fillies, Heavenly Love came under a drive before even getting to the race’s second turn, and spun her wheels to an 11th-place finish. Heavenly Love broke from the rail and was pinned down on the inside over a Del Mar racing surface strongly biased toward outside paths.
“After watching the two days of racing, it was just brutal down inside,” Casse said. “That’s all we can come up with for her. Her race was too bad to be real.”
Heavenly Love will have her first post-Breeders’ Cup work during the next few days at the Casse training center in Ocala, Fla., and will ship shortly thereafter to Fair Grounds with the Jan. 13 Silverbulletday Stakes as her target.
Also headed to Fair Grounds this winter is Holding Gold, who finished seventh but was beaten less than two lengths in the BC Turf Sprint. Holding Gold is being pointed to the Feb. 17 Colonel Power Stakes, a prep for an intended start in the $1 million Al Quoz Sprint on the Dubai World Cup card.
Holding Gold is one of three or four horses Casse has pointed to Dubai, a group that includes the Breeders’ Cup Mile winner World Approval, who will prep for the $6 million Dubai Turf in the Feb. 10 Tampa Bay Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs. Casse has circled the Godolphin Mile for BC Dirt Mile third-place finisher Awesome Slew, who will prep in the Hal’s Hope at Gulfstream, and also is considering Flashaway for the Al Quoz Sprint.
Beschizza gest first U.S. wins
Adam Beschizza has been at Fair Grounds before, working as an exercise rider for trainer Mike Stidham in 2009 and for trainer Joe Sharp in 2015. But this year the 25-year-old English rider is back in New Orleans as a full-time jockey, and he had his first three U.S. winners this past racing week. All three horses, including two Sunday, are trained by Sharp, who met Beschizza when Sharp was an assistant to Stidham the year Beschizza came over.
“I was the one who was supposed to show him the ropes,” Sharp said. “We’ve stayed in touch, and this summer when he mentioned he was thinking of coming over, I told him if he was going to do it, he should do it right.”
Sharp and Hilary Pridham, Stidham’s longtime assistant, helped find Beschizza an agent, Liz Morris.
“It’s not an easy sell with someone nobody knows,” Sharp said. “I told him we’d try to give him a little push, and we have.”
Beschizza began riding professionally in 2009 and lost his apprenticeship 2 1/2 years later, he said. He rode 65 winners overseas this year after winning 62 races in 2016.
“America’s a different world compared to any European racing, but I had a decent grounding coming here before,” Beschizza said. “I do have to sharpen up on my dirt racing, but I do see myself fitting in over here.”
◗ The nominal Thursday feature is the seventh of nine races (first post 1 p.m. Central), a first-level allowance race for 3-year-olds and up going six furlongs on dirt. The six-horse field appears well matched, with the talented Illinois-bred Wynn Time of particular interest. Wynn Time steps up in class but has scored eye-catching wins at Arlington and Hawthorne to start his career.
◗ Miguel Mena left Churchill Downs before the end of the meet to ride from the start of the Fair Grounds season, and that choice has paid off. Mena enters Thursday’s card with 10 wins from 36 mounts, five more winners than the next highest total in a jockey colony that gets much deeper this week.