Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Red Carpet Ready comes off layoff in Hurricane Bertie
HALLANDALE BEACH, Fla. – Red Carpet Ready, winner of the Grade 3 Forward Gal here in rather handy fashion a year ago, has returned to South Florida to launch her 4-yearold campaign Saturday in the Grade 3 Hurricane Bertie Stakes.
The 6 1/2-furlong Hurricane Bertie is the second of two stakes on a card that includes the $100,000 Silks Run, which will feature the 2024 debut of Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint runner-up Big Invasion.
Red Carpet Ready has not started since finishing a tiring and distant seventh behind the ill-fated Maple Leaf Mel as the 8-5 favorite in the Grade 3 Victory Ride at Belmont Park on July 8. One month earlier, Red Carpet Ready lost the opportunity to compete against a much softer group of 3-year-old fillies at Belmont Park when the Jersey Girl Stakes was postponed several days due to unhealthy air conditions created by wildfires in Canada.
“Obviously things didn’t go well for us up there in New York,” trainer Rusty Arnold recalled. “I decided to ship her back to Kentucky after the first stakes was postponed, then vanned her back again for the Victory Ride, during which she sustained a small problem that required minor surgery.
“We gave her plenty of time off to recuperate and this is our starting point Saturday with our first major goal at the moment the Derby City Distaff at Churchill Downs on Derby day. She’s undefeated over that track and we really need to win a Grade 1 with her this year.”
Red Carpet Ready made two starts during the 2022-23 Championship meet. She suffered her first setback in four career outings when a tiring third behind the 45-1 Dorth Vader after contesting a hot early pace in the Grade 2 Davona Dale.
“I stretched her to a mile for that race and she did not run well because it was a mile,” Arnold reasoned. “She’s really more of a six- to sevenfurlong horse. She’s training well, although I wish I had a little more time, like just about everyone does when bringing one back off a layoff like this.”
A field of eight was drawn for the Hurricane Bertie that includes Olivia Darling and Spirit Wind, both Grade 3 winners here earlier in the meet.
Big Invasion, who rallied from well back in the pack to miss by a neck to Nobals in the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, is the defending champ in the Silks Run, having come off an even longer layoff to wear down Yes I Am Free in the closing strides of the 2023 renewal. Yes I Am Free and his uncoupled stablemate Panther Island, along with last-out stakes winner Coppola, are among the other top contenders.
Victory Avenue training again
Victory Avenue, who scratched out of Saturday’s Grade 2 Fountain of Youth the morning of the race, has been back to the track for some “light exercise,” Gustavo Delgado Jr., assistant to his father, trainer Gustavo Delgado, reported on Wednesday.
“The blood results suggested an infection/virus that was starting,” the younger Delgado explained. “He has responded positively to antibiotic treatment and appears to be back to normal.”
Delgado said plans for Victory Avenue, who earned a 97 Beyer Speed Figure for finishing second to Speak Easy in his only start, are still to be decided, with one of his options a maiden special weight race carded at a mile here on March 16. Delgado also did not rule out the $1 million Florida Derby two weeks later.
Rematch brewing
Friday’s main event is a $59,000 optional-claiming and allowance race carded at 7 1/2 furlongs on the turf for Floridabreds. The race brings together Social long distance, Captain Anthony, Diamond Cool, and Shankar, the first-, second-, fourth-, and eighth-place finishers going a mile under similar conditions on Feb .11. Social long distance was a convincing 2 1/2-length winner, rallying from off a quick pace to beat Captain Anthony, who was hung wide around both turns.
Among the fresh faces is the speedy Tap Gold, who will be taking on statebreds for the first time in his career off a gate-towire win over Tapeta against a field of $12,500 conditioned claimers while returning from a 15-month layoff earlier this winter for trainer Rohan Crichton.