The Walther Luck Stakes
The Walther Luck Stakes – Florida – All horses, 4 years old and up, A mile and one quarter on the Fast Dirt Course, Purse : $85,000
PP1 – Skips Away – Gatornavy – L Gann – 6/1
Drawing the rail is this cheaply bred son of Skip Away from the Gatornavy stable. The light grey colt took an age to break his maiden but has been steadily improving for his current trainer. Having posted a career best effort in his last race he comes here in the form of his life but there is a huge doubt that form will be good enough. The bargain bred has a small chance of staying on into a place.
PP2 – Renegade Rider – Champions6 – L Butcha – 6/5 Fav
Next up is the clear-cut morning line favourite from the notorious Legends stable. This dark grey Saint Liam colt has been cleverly handled by his trainer whose patience has been rewarded with a number of impressive performances beginning in November last year. He has won his last five, including two Stakes and he still appears to be improving. Employing his usual front running tactics he’ll be very hard to catch and could be a different class to these rivals.
PP3 – Important Raider – Doublepay – O Barrett – 4/1
Doublepay is represented here by the second bargain bred of the field with this son of Full Mandate who’ll be making his Stakes debut. He comes into this race on the back of two comfortable restricted Allowance wins at this distance and is another in good form at present. He is likely to try and stalk the favourite but will need to improve a fair bit if he is to go past the horse drawn on his inner.
PP4 – Encrypticon – rubber7 – R Maire – 14/1
This cat thief colt, out of the E ranked mare Counting Coup, was claimed by his present owner Rubber7 for only $5k just four runs ago and that already looks like a sound investment. Clearly benefiting from a change of scenery, he put in a great effort to demolish a nw2x Allowance field two runs back and posted a lifetime best speed figure of 103. Having struggled in a much tougher Allowance LTO this race looks like a tall order and, being a horse that seems difficult to keep fit and healthy, one wonders how he’ll cope with these exertions.
PP5 – Ermington Dane – Pigeon6 – C Faucher – 37/1
The extreme outsider of the field is Decon’s Nothin Leica Dane colt. He was a decent performer in his younger days and was a Stakes winner as a 3yo in April 2006 however he hasn’t won since. It looks as if this horse’s glory days are well behind and he has no chance against these horses over this trip.
PP6 – Dwell On It – Flagdown2 – P McJulien – 7/2
The second favourite is by another cheap sire Contemplate out of a Kayf Tara mare. This 5 year old appears to be a late bloomer and he has started to piece together some decent bits of form over the last eight months. Stamina appears to be his forte and he is a Stakes winner over 13 panels. He was given a confidence-boosting drop in class and distance LTO and his trainer Flagdown was clearly impressed with that run as he has kept him at 10 furlongs for this race. Provided he doesn’t fall too far behind the leaders his closing style could be well suited to this type of race and he could be the favourites chief danger.
PP7 – Crunchbox – Sdmf – C Stubbs – 9/2
Sdmf’s runner, the second Saint Liam colt in the line-up, completes the field and he isn’t without a chance. As with many of his sires sadly limited offspring this dark grey appears to be improving with age and it wasn’t until he went beyond 10 furlongs that he finally started to look like he may be above average. Winning a 12f restricted Stakes race last December with a mighty 109 speed figure was his best performance and he has ran fairly well this year in a G3 over that same distance however his last two outings have been very poor (beaten a combined total of 48 lengths). If he brings his A game into the race he’ll be in with a chance but he has plenty of questions to answer.
Summary
This race revolves around favourite Renegade Rider and whether he’ll see out the trip, trying 10 furlongs for the first time, however he is in such grand heart at the moment it would be foolish to side against him. He is chosen to stretch his winning run to six.
Dwell On It could have the race run to suit and his hold up tactics along with his proven stamina will benefit from the likely strong pace. If there are any chinks in the favourite’s armour this colt will be the most likely to expose them.
Cruchbox clearly has a fair amount of ability and his racing style is adaptable but his last two races were too bad to ignore and he couldn’t be supported with any confidence.
Important Raider is the best of the rest but he’ll need a lifetime best by some margin to mix it with this bunch.
1 – Renegade Rider
2 – Dwell On It
3 – Crunchbox