Recruiting Ready, Afleet Willy square off in Dave’s Friend

The featured race at Laurel Park on Saturday, the $100,000 Dave’s Friend, is representative of the afternoon’s six stakes – the field is large and competitive.

The stakes, which offer total purses of $550,000, will be run as races 4-9. The high temperature for the day is forecast to be 31 degrees, which should not interfere with the Christmastide Day program.

Fourteen are entered in the six-furlong Dave’s Friend, but Do Share, the winner of the Gravesend at Aqueduct last Saturday, is expected to scratch. Recruiting Ready and Afleet Willy are the horses to beat, but both have obstacles to overcome.

If they make a false step, Favorite Tale, Struth, and El Areeb are capable of taking advantage.

Recruiting Ready has had a promising but abbreviated 3-year-old campaign for the Sagamore Farm of Kevin Plank and trainer Horacio De Paz. He has used his quickness to win two stakes, but will be returning from a layoff of more than six months and has drawn the not-so-popular inside post.

Since September, horses in one-turn dirt races at Laurel have won 9 percent of their starts from post 1. That is the lowest win percentage of the eight inside starting positions.

The Dave’s Friend will be Recruiting Ready’s first race since he finished third in the Grade 2 Woody Stephens on Belmont Stakes Day. Prior to that, he had scored emphatic victories in the $200,000 Chick Lang on Preakness Day at Pimlico and the $150,000 Bachelor at Oaklawn Park.

“He’d had a hard winter, and then he got a little sick after the Woody Stephens, so we gave him some time,” De Paz said. “Then he had a little foot issue. He’s been in light training since July and runs well fresh. He won first time out as a 2-year-old, and he won first time after we shipped him north last winter.”

Ready-made stakes horses rarely come the way of trainer Claudio Gonzalez. He has to develop them himself, which is what he has accomplished with Afleet Willy, whom he claimed for $25,000 out of a maiden-claiming victory in December 2015.

Afleet Willy has since won nine times for Gonzalez, including stakes in his last two starts. He is a six-time winner at his home base of Laurel.

On the downside, Afleet Willy is primarily a two-turn horse. His last two victories have come at 1 1/8 miles and a mile and 70 yards. Gonzalez plans on running him in the 1 1/16-mile Native Dancer at Laurel next month.

“He is best going long,” Gonzalez said. “He relaxes, and then he runs. I have to do something with him because he is too sharp, and this is the only race I have.”

Gonzalez was relieved when Afleet Willy drew post 13.

“The best thing is that he is outside,” he said. “If he had post 1 or 2 or 3, I would have had to scratch him.”

Despite Afleet Willy’s distance preference, he has natural speed and is the most likely winner of the Dave’s Friend.

Favorite Tale, 6, is back in good form for trainer Lupe Preciado following a 17-month layoff. Struth is coming off a comfortable win over easier rivals for Kieron Magee, and El Areeb has a license to take a major step forward for Cal Lynch while making his second start following knee surgery.

◗ The $100,000 Thirty Eight Go Go, a one-mile race for fillies and mares, has a wideopen field of 13. In part because the Eastern-based runners are so difficult to separate, favoritism could go to Kentucky shipper Julerette, who has won three races in a row, all for trainer Ben Colebrook.

Other top contenders include the Chad Browntrained Going for Broke; Bishop’s Pond, trained by Jason Servis; Power of Snunner, based at Penn National with Timothy Kreiser; and Line of Best Fit, stabled at Laurel with Gonzalez.