Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Boca Boy should enjoy drop into allowance
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – After taking a couple of trips down the Kentucky Derby road, Boca Boy will look to negotiate a little easier route when he goes postward among the choices in the first of two allowance events on Friday’s nine-race program at Gulfstream Park. The sevenfurlong race is for 3-year-olds and drew a field of six.
Boca Boy, upset winner of the In Reality Stakes last year here in his 2-year-old finale, finished fourth in the Grade 3 Sam F. Davis at Tampa Bay Downs and eighth in the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby to open his 3-yearold campaign. Boca Boy set the pace for more than six furlongs in both races before faltering down the stretch while failing to stay the same 1 1/16-mile distance he had handled so readily when posting a wire-towire two-length decision over odds-on Breeze On By last fall in the In Reality.
“I think he just got a little tired,” Ken Winebaugh, assistant to and husband of trainer Cheryl Winebaugh, said regarding Boca Boy’s races at Tampa Bay Downs. “Maybe I didn’t have him tight enough coming off a long layoff in the Sam Davis. In the Tampa Derby, he got buried down on the rail, which seemed to be very deep that day after all the rain they had that seemed to settle the track down near the inside.”
Boca Boy, who has been stabled at Gulfstream all winter, has had only a single work since the March 6 Tampa Derby, a bullet five furlongs in 59.60 seconds here March 30.
“He had a little ulcer problem after the Tampa Derby, so I backed off him a bit and he is looking and eating much better now,” Winebaugh said. “But I felt he needed to do something a little serious after that, so I set him down a bit more than usual in his last work. I didn’t want him coming up short again on Friday. He’s doing well and I expect him to run a really good race.”
Boca Boy will face just five rivals while taking on allowance company for the first time in his career. His opponents are led by Lauda Speed, who is exiting a third-place finish in the six-furlong Hutcheson here. Trained by Saffie Joseph Jr., Lauda Speed won his only start at seven furlongs, which came under a $35,000 claiming tag in a maiden race moved from turf to a sloppy main track in August.
Lauda Speed has trained forwardly for his return to the allowance ranks, with his March 28 half-mile work in 47.96 coming in company with Mischevious Alex, who used that drill as a stepping-stone to his one-sided victory in the Grade 1 Carter last Saturday at Aqueduct.
Boca Boy could face early pace pressure from the raildrawn Real Talk, who stretches out a furlong off a fourth-place finish, a length behind Lauda Speed, in the Hutcheson. The remainder of the field is Ocean Ride, King Cairo, and Super Strong. Super Strong, an import from Puerto Rico also trained by Joseph, finished 10th in the Tampa Derby in his U.S. debut.
◗ The second of Friday’s co-features, to be decided at a mile over the turf, lured seven fillies and mares, including the graded stakes-tested pair of Kelsey’s Cross and Lashara, along with recent winners Shifty She, La Babia, and Hotsy Totsy.
Kelsey’s Cross seeks her first victory since capturing the Ginger Punch Stakes for Florida-breds here last June. She returns locally off a sixthplace finish in the Grade 3 Endeavour on Feb. 6 at Tampa Bay while dropping in against allowance competition for the first time since defeating entrylevel opposition in September 2019.
Lashara, seventh in the Grade 2 Lake Placid last year at 3, returned from a 5 1/2-month hiatus to finish a tiring sixth under allowance conditions here March 5.