Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
If Roderick is on his game, he’ll be tough in Hutcheson
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – It was feast or famine for the speedy Roderick during his roller-coaster 2-year-old campaign last year. Which Roderick will show up Saturday at Gulfstream Park will be key to the outcome of the six-furlong Hutcheson, the first of three $75,000 sprint stakes on a 12-race program.
The card might be impacted by the weather, with a 90 to 100 percent chance of rain in the forecast throughout the local area on Saturday morning.
Roderick won his career debut by 8 1/4 lengths last summer at Belmont Park and closed out his juvenile campaign in November with a convincing 3 3/4-length allowance win at Churchill Downs for which he received a career best 92 Beyer Speed Figure. In between, he lost three straight starts, including a last-place finish as the 1-2 favorite in the Grade 2 Best Pal at Del Mar and a 15-length setback when trying turf for the first and only time in the Indian Summer Stakes at Keeneland.
“He won his first start nicely and I was confident he’d run just as well in the Best Pal, but he got brushed by another horse, took off weaving through the field, and just stopped,” said Wesley Ward, who trains Roderick for Breeze Easy LLC.
Ward said Roderick didn’t like the grass in the Indian Summer, but came back “with a pretty good effort” to run third in the Nyquist on Nov. 6 at Keeneland. Ward said the 6 1/2 furlongs of the Nyquist was a bit farther than Roderick wanted to run.
“Then,” Ward said, “he put it all together again and ran a huge number winning that allowance at Churchill Downs.”
Ward said Roderick ran so big in that race that he wanted to give him ample opportunity to recuperate from the effort, and all along was targeting the Hutcheson for his 3-year-old debut. Roderick has done the bulk of his work prepping for his return at Gulfstream Park West, with a couple of day trips to Palm Meadows tossed in to work over the turf.
“He’s done everything right so far preparing for this race,” said Ward. “His last work up at Palm Meadows was great. The turf down here is a lot different, a lot firmer, than in Kentucky. He’s coming into this race just the way I’d want him to. Whether that translates into a win or not, that’s another question, since I said the same thing about him before the Best Pal and looked what happened there.”
Ward also said that he’d expect Roderick, being by Into Mischief, would likely benefit from a wet track.
A field of seven was drawn for the Hutcheson and it includes Ultimate Badger, a distant third in the Grade 3 Swale five weeks earlier; last-out allowance winners Real Talk and Lauda Speed; along with Warrior’s Pride, Willy Boi, and Worlds On High.
Captiva Island Stakes
Ward will also send out Karak, weather permitting, as one of the key players in the Captiva Island, a five-furlong turf sprint for fillies and mares.
Ward is not quite as bullish on Karak’s chances as he is with Roderick, because the 4-year-old filly is returning from a 10-month layoff while facing older horses for the first time in her career.
Karak, a two-time stakes winner from just seven starts, has been idle since finishing third in a 5 1/2-furlong allowance dash at Churchill Downs on May 16, a race moved from the turf to a fast main track.
“She got a little crabby going after her last start – nothing we could really pinpoint – so we gave her quite a bit of time off and she’s been getting marginally better with each successive work,” said Ward. “This race didn’t come up as salty as these kind usually do here this time of year, which is good, although while she’s breezing okay, she’s not breezing quite as well as in her younger days.”
Ward said Karak would not run if the race comes off the grass.
The versatile Miss Auramet, winner of the grassy Lightning City Stakes at Tampa Bay Downs in her last start, may prove the one to beat, turf or dirt, for trainer Eddie Plesa Jr. A Bit of Both, another capable of winning on all surfaces, looms a major player as well in the Captiva Island, along with the speedy Tracy Ann’s Legacy, a three-time winner over the local course, and her improving stablemate Queen of Shades.
Any Limit Stakes
Stakes winners Shea D Summer, Feeling Mischief, and No Mo’ Spending are among the leading candidates in the wide-open Any Limit, a six-furlong race on the main track for 3-year-old fillies.
They will take on six others, with trainer Chad Brown’s impressive debut winner Boston Post Road and the stakes-placed pair of Farsighted and Shop Girl also hard to ignore.
Both Shea D Summer and Shop Girl have won on a wet track, a notable fact should the weather indeed impact the track condition on Saturday.