Delaware Park horses to watch: July 16, 2018
by Frank Vespe
Delaware Park has an eight-race card with the finale for Arabians scheduled for July 16. Post time is 1:15 p.m. Here are some horses to watch:
Race 4 – Maiden special weight
- Three-year-olds and up will go 1 1/16 miles on the turf.
- #2 Inle (8-1) is a debut runner by the solid sire Blame. The three-year-old colt is out of the stakes-winning Seattle Slew mare Sea of Showers. He is a half-brother to the talented Soglio, who on July 7 finished third in the Grade 3 Stars and Stripes at Arlington Park and has earned over $200,000 in his career. Inle has been training well enough for trainer Graham Motion and has a couple of bullet works on the page. Wouldn’t go overboard on this runner; Motion is just six percent with debut turf runners and it’s not easy for a horse to win first out of the box going a route of ground. But Jorge Vargas, Jr. is up, and he and Motion have hit at over 30 percent together the last two months.
- He didn’t show a lot in his first two tries, in the latter part of 2017, but let’s give three-year-old #6 Promontory (8-1) one more crack. The son of Giant’s Causeway is out of the uber-productive Cryptoclearance mare Ava Knowsthecode; his half-sibs include six stakes winners, among them the millionaire Justin Phillip, the speedy Keyed Entry, and Algorithms, who retired undefeated in three starts. Trainer Arnaud Delacour sees fit to give this one another crack in straight maiden company and switches, for this first start of 2018, to jockey Daniel Centeno; the Centeno-Delacour combo has been hitting at 50 percent the last two months.
- Selections: 6-7-2-3
ARABIAN WATCH
Arabian handicapping is provided by our friends at Arabian Finish Line.
Here we have a full field of non-winners of two races for Arabians going 1 mile and 70 yards. The interesting horse in this race is So Big Boy. He broke his maiden in a huge way only a week ago. We’ll see just how good he is with this quick turnaround, not uncommon for a Scott Powell trained horse, and increase in distance. A good entry comes from Simon Hobson and Pinewood Stables – Captain Bush and RB Hocus Pocus, who finished first and second respectively in their last starts. RB Wild Card and Burn Em Joey (with leading jockey Carol Cedeno) also both won their most recent starts and could be very competitive.