‘The Cowboy’ ambles in for Skip Away win

HALLANDALE — Fear the Cowboy was ticketed to run in a race at Oaklawn Park in Arkansas last week. His trainer, Efren Loza Jr., called an audible when he saw the nominations for Saturday’s Skip Away at Gulfstream Park and noticed the $100,000 race looked like it would have a short field with no standout.

He decided to withdraw from the Arkansas race and ship Fear the Cowboy to South Florida. It wasn’t foreign terrain. Loza campaigns here during Gulfstream’s summer season, Fear the Cowboy won his first race here and the winner’s owners, Kathleen Amaya and Raffae Centofanati, have homes here.

Loza’s handicapping paid off as Fear the Cowboy rallied from off the pace to win the Grade 3 stakes, the first graded triumph for horse and trainer. Loza has no qualms about putting Fear the Cowboy on a van. It was the horse’s fourth track in his past four races. “He is a horse I ship to different racetracks and he always runs good.” In his last race before Saturday’s, he was second in a $100,000 stakes in Houston.

Jesus Rios took his time aboard Fear the Cowboy, allowing him to drop back to last in the six-horse field down the backstretch as Flashy Jewel set an unhurried pace, stalked by evenmoney favorite Zulu. “That was the plan and it went perfectly,” Rios said. Rios asked Fear the Cowboy for more as the field Efren Loza Jr., trainer approached the far turn. Midway through the turn he had moved up to fourth and he was moving best of all.

“I was sure I would win because the leader was declining and I had a lot of horse,” Rios said. Fear the Cowboy collared Flashy Jewel just inside the eighth pole and moved away quickly, driving under the wire three lengths, the best in 1:51.81 for a mile and an eighth. Zulu outfinished a tiring Flashy Jewel by a neck for the place.

“He is a horse I ship to different racetracks and he always runs good.”