Short on numbers, high on class: Fuzzy Rainbow takes on Maine

I’m a big fan of handling young horses carefully, but there’s such a thing as being too careful, and that would be letting the $45,000 Sharp Son Special (three-year-olds racing seven and a half furlongs on the turf) go off with a computer horse in the field.  Alas!

Sharp Son raced for three different owners over four years and sixty-two races.  A son of Gone West out of a Sharpen Up(GB) mare, he won seven times and hit the board twenty-five, earning not quite $300,000, mostly on the grass.  He won a listed stakes at five and that same year, placed in the Grade III Amerika Stakes.  Refinement stables had him for most of his career, nabbing him out of a $50,000 claiming race and returning him to the turf, and still owns his five-year-old daughter by Sinndar(Ire).  That’s Tes Inndar(Ire), a seven-time winner of $250,000, whose claim to fame is a show in the Grade I Demona Handicap last year.

Well-regarded Fuzzy Rainbow (Rainbow Quest) drops in to take advantage of this small field and will go off at even odds.  A top-twenty three-year-old on the grass, he’s out of stakes-placed Storm Cat mare Overpass Kitty.  He’s her third winner from four foals (his two-year-old full brother has started just once) and second with a graded stakes placing.  The speedy ‘Rainbow was second in two graded stakes last year but was outrun early in the Breeders Bowl Juvenile Turf.  He seems to have learned patience at three, settling farther back in both starts and passing horses late.  He was fifth in the Equinics and fourth last out in the Grade III Chantily Lace Cup (both contested over off-tracks).  The capable G. Giant gets the mount.

But On Hold (Hold That Tiger) won’t plan on making it easy for him.  The derbycity trainee is the only runner thus far from a stakes-placed El Prado(Ire) mare.  He was a good-enough two-year-old, twice stakes-placed, but blossomed last time out in his first try over the turf.  A nose in front a the first call and a head at the second, he showed no fear and continued to edge away, finishing a length and three-quarters clear of stakes winner I Swear.  That display of heart is nothing to scoff at and the 93 speed rating matches ‘Rainbow’s best.

Rainbow Quest is also represented here by Quest N Quest, only son of a stakes-winning Coronado’s Quest mare.  The cheryl30 trainee has just four races under his belt, all over the main track, and has won two (the first and the last).  He has early speed and wouldn’t need much improvement to figure in here, but jockey A. Unger has been struggling and ‘Quest’s dam never cared for the grass.

The aforementioned computer entry is Dance Across Texas, by Red Ransom.  Formerly of top trainer texasace‘s barn, the front-running colt was dumped after a weak showing in an allowance race over a “good” track.  They can’t all be Horseshoe Bay and this kid would make a nice pickup for someone if he finds himself in a claiming race.