Who Blewitt?

I don’t know Jason Blewitt. Not personally, anyway.

He’s the subject of the first prep race I’ve used for my own race, the CVBear’s Hometown Turf Stakes, to be run on the New Yorker Stakes card on June 9. Since I picked off some extra credits, I figured the time was ripe to find a local prep with which to promote my race. And the prep serves an additional purpose. See, I pledged a 750-credit bonus for the trainer who wins this race and wins the Hometown Turf Stakes as well in a few weeks. Seems like fun, right?

Well, I didn’t promote this going forward as properly as I should have this year. And then, there’s the weather. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow, there’ll be sun, but it’s raining like a mo—well, it’s raining a lot, let’s say. The race stays on the New York track’s Widener turf at 5.5 furlongs, but it’s a yielding turf course hosting the Jason Blewitt’s runners. And thusly, only four were entered.

Now, about the name. Jason Blewitt is the host of the NYRA recap show airing every racing day on MSG+ (on DirecTV, channel 635). One night, as I watched my DVR’d collection of shows—I DVR it every day, as I’ve been a long-time devotee of NYRA racing—at Aqueduct, Jason had mentioned on the air that he went to high school at my high school. This made me feel old. Then, there was a sort of civic pride. I hated my high school days with the passion of a juvenile Mitt Romney roaming the halls with “friends”. But even in high school, I was a NYRA fan. I put down in my yearbook put as a future goal, to paraphrase (because I don’t wanna go back and look), that I wanted to get rich playing long shots at Belmont. Non-conformist as I was, I suppose, you could call me a racing geek.

Anyway, he was a few years behind me, and I graduated from high school the year before he started as a seventh-grader. But as I was scrambling to come up with a name for the prep, without success, he mentioned his alma mater on the air, and suddenly I put two and two together, got five, looked at my handwriting again, got four, and named the race for Jason. Hence, the $75,000 Jason Blewitt Stakes was born. Ironic, it is, two men, discovering racing at a young age, both having discovered broadcasting at an equally young age, both having a connection to a NYRA recap show (a long story for another time), attending the same high school many moons apart.

The Blewitt is headed by three well matched fillies, and one who is slowly re-emerging from a long break and fighting her way back up the mountain. This quartet is eligible for the bonus next month, should they choose to run back in the CVBear’s Hometown Turf..

Turf Champion [War Chant x Giant’s Causeway, trained by rbaze3 for Big Cheese Racing] is a fair mare on the main track, but her turf form, as her pedigree dictates, is actually quite decent. She was 3-for-6 in turf sprints last year, with speed figures capable of entering triple digits. More recently, though, she’s pulled off a streak of seven straight dirt speed figures over 100, and that was topped by a 108 back in March going beyond a mile. Her rationale for running in this spot runs in many directions: she’s an excellent sprinter, she can run on the grass, and craves wet weather wherever it happens to fall. She has three wins and a second in five wet-weather outings, and is 2-for-2 on wet grass, both in sprints. Usually she’s a stalker, but in such close quarters in a small field, she might wind up on the lead here. The question is in her stakes quality, as her only grass stakes race on open company saw her finishing eighth at nine furlongs. She likes sprinting more than anything else, and in such a small field, even without quality stakes outings, something simple like the intangibles of loving it wet and loving the sprints, are all you need in lieu of form.

Ermington Drop [Eavesdropper-China First Lady, by Cat Thief, trained by bizalls1 for Bizalls Stables] was a stakes winner at 2, all the way back in 2006. She raced constantly, and a bit consistently, all the way through May 2009. Then she took an extended break, sitting on the sidelines for two and a half years before returning to action last fall. She’s been trying really hard to race her way fit in the last six months, but the extended break seems to have set her back significantly in terms of form, as her best finish was a fourth in another short field turf sprint last out. She’s nicely bred, and on paper should have an affinity for grass racing, and on the positive side, she wasn’t badly beaten last time out, and she’s picked up a paycheck in three of four grass tries prior to this. But she faces an uphill climb here, even with some good efforts over soft ground on the turf, because her speed figures have declined by approximately 20 points from their highs last decade. The last start earned her just a 58, which is far below what her opposition can deal out on a bad day. She’s always been a tough, valiant mare, and her career speaks for itself in respectability. But she’s seriously up against it in this field, and should only expect some slight improvement to pick up the pieces late.

Winds Of Gold [A.P. Indy-Chasing The Wind, by Unbridled’s Song, trained by spinround for Spinround Stables] has turf form to spare, with three wins in the last seven months in turf sprints, including three straight near-misses this year in her last three starts. Her preferred running style is a mid-pack stalker, but circumstances may force her to sit more forward among the quartet than she’s used to. Her recent speed figures sit comfortably here, so on a class level she’s definitely a contender, but her speed figures could stand a boost to keep her in the mix, and she’s never faced a boggy course like she will face here. She’s been a grinder who has looked pretty good rising from starters to allowances to stakes, and there’s plenty to like in her form, but the devil is in the details, such as how far from the pace she might opt to sit, and if she’ll be forced by the conditions of this race to sit closer to the front end than she may be comfortable with. Still, she’s possibly a bigger threat here to the heavy favorite if she finds favor in here with the race intangibles, and she’s the only member of the field with honest and true grass credentials; one to watch.

Philosophical Cat [Bluegrass Cat x Machiavellian, trained by coolbreeze for back to business] does have what the other fillies haven’t: a winning streak. She’s won two in a row, both in dirt sprints, with a best last-out speed figure of 105. Those were in allowance company, and on dirt, but they remain compelling performances, particularly her last start, because she managed to hold off last year’s Breeders Bowl F&M Sprint runner-up K’s Broken Dream. She’s 2-for-6 on the turf, but both of those wins were in grass sprints, and she was fifth last September in a turf sprint stakes that was front-loaded with talent. Now she did get hurt in her last grass outing last fall, and was forced to take three months off, and this will be her first turf race since then, but the rest and recuperation seems to have paid off with a string of steadily improving efforts thus far in 2012. In a field that on paper is devoid of any early speed whatsoever, she stands out with one of her grass wins where she went gate-to-wire up front. She’s never faced a wet turf course like this before, but she’s hit the board twice in two wet-track starts on the dirt, so a little moisture shouldn’t be too bad for her in this spot. If she can back to her last, there may be no catching her.

It’s a short field, and maybe a Handicapping 101 race, because you have a standout favorite who will take a lot of money, and a couple of value plays who seem intriguing versus the chalk. What should one do, buy into the chalk, or look for whatever value you can find? My suggestion is to take the value, and box the second and third choices for a fair exacta play…but beware of a Turf Champion stepping in to scuttle things. You can figure it out from there, I’m sure. The winner stays eligible for a 750-credit bonus next month if they capture the CVBear’s Hometown Turf Stakes in four weeks.

Good luck, and happy racing.