Visitant finds synthetic track to his liking in Alcatraz win
Trainer John F. Martin would have been happy giving Visitant his first start on grass in the $75,600 Alcatraz Stakes on Sunday at Golden Gate Fields. Martin was even happier that rain forced the race to be moved to the Tapeta Footings synthetic main track.
Taking advantage of a speed duel between Southern Californians Kingly and One Bad Boy, Visitant closed steadily down the stretch and won the 1-mile race for 3-year-olds going away by 1¼ lengths.
“He’s bred for the turf, but you never know until you try it,” Martin said. “This is a good horse. He wasn’t even tired after the race, wasn’t even breathing hard. He’s got good lungs.”
Visitant showed great potential when he won his 5½furlong debut by 4 lengths March 7 at GGF and then stretched out to 1 mile to win an allowance by 1 length just 22 days later.
William E. Morey trained Visitant for those first two starts, but owner-breeder Henry Williamson moved the bay colt to Martin when Morey dispersed his stable in early April.
In Visitant’s first start for Martin in the 11⁄16-mile California Derby on April 27, he closed from 10 lengths back to finish second, losing by a half-length to Kingly.
Kingly was back from Santa Anita for Sunday’s race, and One Bad Boy made the trip north, too, after a fast 1-mile maiden win on grass by 4¼ lengths.
The two invaders raced heads apart through fractions of 23.21 seconds, 47.79 and 1:11.96 before One Bad Boy — the 9-10 favorite — overtook Kingly in midstretch. Then Visitant passed them both and finished in 1:36.73 — the fastest mile clocking of the season.
“I figured they would set a good pace,” said William Antongeorgi III, who has ridden Visitant in all four races. “I knew at the top of the stretch that I was going to get there. I was confident that he would progress off of that last start and he did.”
Although Martin wasn’t worried about the surface, he was somewhat concerned that front-runners dominated the day’s previous races.
“I was a little worried about the speed bias, but those two horses went and set it up,” Martin said.
With no stakes races for 3-year-olds in Northern California for the foreseeable future, Martin and Williamson will be eyeing somewhere else for Visitant’s next start.
“We’ve got to look for a race now,” Martin said.