Hark! DelPenn Champions Day Juvenile Filly Sprint Approaches

“Yecch the halls with DelPenn fillies/blah blah blah blah blah/blah blah blah blah…” Sorry, couldn’t resist.

The $75,000 DelPenn Champions Day Juvenile Filly Sprint is on the DPCD card in New Jersey Saturday.  It is restricted to DelPenn trainers only.  More’s the pity, looking at this field.  It’s a stakes race in search of a few average allowance horses, a bunch of widely varying juvenile fillies looking for a niche in the two-year-old pecking order, and confusion should have been made the favorite over most of these.  Even the present of a few minor stakes winners doesn’t quite inspire a lot of confidence.  Don’t believe me?  Take a look for yourself.  I wouldn’t lie to you.  Honest Injun.

Fulgurant [Green Desert-Brianne’s Mambo, by Kingmambo], the word, is an adjective, meaning “flashing like lightning; dazzlingly bright.”  You gotta hand it to trainer general: their sense of humility is outranked by their sense of irony.  Fulgurant, the horse, is a stakes winner twice over, in a pair of stakes races in which she was battling hard and fighting strong against fields of five.  She was at or near the front in each, and was no match for fields of such depth and intensity, as her victories earned her identical, eye-opening speed figures of 77.  She was eighth and fading in the Lightning Bert Stakes last out, which is an additional layer of irony for a filly named for something flashing like lightning, though it earned her an 80 fig, in any event.  She’ll stalk whatever’s ahead of her, and can be on the lead as conditions allow, but she’s 0-for-2 at the distance; 5-1 seems a bit generous from the morning-line folks, but ours is not to reason why.

Grand Causeway(IRE) [Giant’s Causeway-Cooter’s Action, by A.P. Indy] represents the super16 stables—oh, by the way, we get it, you’re super, we tremble in fear, yadda yadda—and this horse at this point is more duper than super.  She started off in the usual fashion: she broke her maiden, then won an allowance, then a stakes, then crashed to earth in graded company and hasn’t won since.  So, par for the course.  Her numbers, I grant you, from her last four starts on the dirt are solid, in the 80s regularly since winning her maiden, but when her performances in her two graded efforts tanked (to the admitted amusements of embittered conspiracy theorists), she tried turf last out, and discovered she dug grazing in the grass far more than running on it.  The turf-to-dirt angle should help her numbers improve, and she figures to get another decent stalking trip here.

Lil GTO [Pulpit-Size Ten(GB), by Mtoto(GB)] may have been bred like a Pontiac for trainer genesis, but she runs like a Yugo.  She took three attempts before breaking her maiden over a mile, with numbers that, to be fair, improved into the 70s by the time of her win.  But she’s been struggling to get better versus winners and hasn’t been able to get ahead.  Her one dirt allowance was middling, though she picked up a check for not running out of gas, and her grass try brought to mind thoughts of another Detroit clunker, the Edsel.  She aims for the same turf-to-dirt angle as stated above, but she’ll have to get out of her own way to do better at a distance that she hasn’t appeared to be comfortable with.

Dr Strangelove [Cat Thief x Miswaki].  Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb.  Ain’t it the truth.  Trained by worldwide, this bomb has yet to go off.  She’s got just a maiden win in six starts, though she’s managed to earn a check five times.  Her numbers are strictly disco: 72 to 76.  And the turf-to-dirt angle hasn’t quite worked out as she planned here, as she’s not gained the usual bump that a failure on grass normally gives a horse when it comes back again on dirt.  She’s one who has more a preference towards going to the lead, but she’s not really fast or versatile enough to maintain things, not even if Peter Sellers was playing her.  9-1, though?  Well, Christmas is a time of charity.

Conga Line [Congaree x Unbridled] is part of this edition of the super11 daisy chain, and is a too-obvious favorite here.  She won her first three starts, including a stakes effort, but what started out as a Grade II try in the Red Fish Blue Fish went the way of “Seussical: The Musical” when she tired to finish eighth.  But she learned a lot that day, and put her education into practice in subsequent starts, with a win and two seconds, all in stakes company.  Her numbers reflect the maturity, through improvement into the mid-80s, so she should benefit from these experiences.  She does like to go to the lead, however, and the worry should be whether her speed can hold up late.  Sad as I am to say, though, that’s about as snotty as I can get here about the favorite.  Damn the luck.

Killing Machine [Palace Music-Twist In The Wind, by Glitterman] is so inbred to Bold Ruler through the dam (4D x 4D x 4D) I’m surprised she’s not sitting on a back porch somewhere picking at a banjo.  Alas, such close inbreeding on the bottom of her pedigree has paid nicely for the barn of sdmf4, as she’s earned two wins in seven starts, not to mention a paycheck in every time out except for her debut.  She’s speedy, likes to make a beeline for the lead and try to hang on, and with Conga Line shaking her bon bon out there, she should do her best trying to wear out the (*yawn*) superduper horse.  She’s versatile enough in terms of distance, enjoying both long and short sprints, which is all the surprising considering her dam, with all that Bold Ruler in her blood, likely had trouble standing on all fours, which is the one plausible reason why she stayed a maiden over a mercifully brief career.  She took a sharp leap forward over her last three starts, numbers rising sharply into the high-80s.  In spite of the best last-out fig of 88, though, she’s been made, by the oddsmakers who’ve apparently dipped into the Maker’s Mark a tad early, a 6-1 co-fourth choice.  I imagine, though, there’s a good chance the two speeds will do a number on one another in this six-panel effort, so that the morning-line may not matter.

Triple Trek [Coronado’s Quest-Nurey’s Risen Star, by Nureyev] just recently broke her maiden in her fourth start, so her placement here, despite the…um, divergent talents of the assembled has enough ambition to make Madonna seem squishy.  Her numbers have warmed up into the 70s, the MSW win a 76, but despite her closing abilities, what in the name of Zippy Chippy is she doing here?  Eventually, via her pedigree, she might develop both a desire for grass and routes, but a mere NW2L would’ve sufficed.  It seems that a pound of ambition has been applied to try and get an ounce of blacktype for trainer kearsarge.  To her credit, though, she’s young, is certain to get a bit better, and will love closing over a distance of ground.  But my wager is that she’s not a sprinter, and is a bit overmatched in this particular spot…not that this spot requires 1500-credit horses for the win.

Barb’s Dane Silly(GB) [Dansili(GB)-Our Dance, by Mr. Greeley] is a “Barb” horse from the barn of jakematt1, who should be granted credit for consistency, as this filly has hit the board each time out.  She’s a sprinter who’s come into her own since saying buh-bye to the grass.  She broke her maiden after four successive seconds, and then won an allowance before coming back to earth when third in a West Virginia stakes last out.  Her figs are pretty solid, in the low-80s, but she should appreciate coming from off the pace, and with a pace duel expected early, that should give this filly hope.  Was it a bit fluky that the numbers got better rather quickly after the maiden win, or has she hit a maturity curve at the right time?  We’ll know more in this spot.  (I was a bit nice here, but what more can I add?  Even her pedigree, from a stakes winner equally adept on either surface, cooperated.)

Desert Aly(IRE) [Desert King(IRE)-Alylou Smell, by Victory Gallop] has had two starts, and won her maiden last out.  Her maiden win was a 73, and she now owns exactly half of her mom’s win total.  She benefits from hanging close to the pace, and stretches out at the right time to six panels for the first time.  She’s trained by elshadi, and…that’s about it.  Although, according to my handy-dandy Nexis Race Finder, I see that there are sixteen allowance races on dirt that fit her conditions well, and four on turf that she might have liked, with horses that are literally every bit as talented as this bunch.  Yet she’s here.  Granted, it’s shooting fish in a barrel here, but still.  You just have to wonder sometimes. 

Mine Chant [War Chant x Mining] is next.  And nowwhat?  That’s the trainer.  This filly’s won once in three starts, and just wired a maiden field last out, resulting in an 84.  She turns back in distance and should play second banana all the way down the backstretch to fric and frac.  I like her breeding, which adds precocity, speed and, yet, War Chant into the mix, a combination designed to keep her in NW1x allowances probably until Easter.  There’s too much pace for her to truly hang, and she’s shown no willingness to try and rate in her other efforts.  Longer sprints seem more her speed anyway, but she should develop into a pretty nice filly down the line.  The outside post might not be such a help, either.

New Moon [Victory Moon(SAF) x Nureyev] is 1-for-4 (what, did nobody really want to try for an easier allowance race for NW2L?) for poppop, who came from off the pace in her last to get her MSW win in start #4, with a staggering 74, a career-high fig.  She’ll stalk the leaders, but much improvement would be needed—like maybe a full moon, a blue moon, a honky-tonk moon, maybe even the man on the moon sabotaging the event by dropping green cheese on the track at the other jockeys.  Middle distances will hold some allure later, but now is not so much in the cards.

I think I’ve seen some better fields in Kansas during a drought, but for this particular match-up, here’s the picks.

1. Barb’s Dane Silly(GB)
2. Killing Machine
3. Conga Line
4. Grand Causeway(IRE)

Good luck to all, happy racing, and happy holidays to one and all, to DelPenn and beyond.