Delaware Park 2019 horses to watch: June 26

by Frank Vespe

Delaware Park has an eight-race card on tap for Wednesday. Some horses to watch:

Race 7 – Allowance

• Fillies and mares three and up will go 1 1/16 miles on the turf in a first-level allowance.
• What a good race this one is; several of these could certainly win here. The Arnaud Delacour-trained #4 Ionic (9-2) is among those contenders. This City Zip filly won at first asking at Tampa Bay and followed that up with just-miss effort last time out at Laurel Park. That was two months ago, and she’s been training steadily towards her return here. The winner of that last race, Souper Escape, was up the track in the Hilltop Stakes in her follow-up, but last time out, she made amends by winning the Christiana Stakes locally. Regular pilot Daniel Centeno will do the honors.
• One horse who had been keeping better company than this is #5 Sweet Sandy (15-1). The seven-year-old Flatter mare, who will make her first start in trainer Mike Gorham’s barn, made just three starts last year, running second in a second-level allowance locally before finishing up the track in the G3 Robert G. Dick Memorial. She won the 2017 William Backer Memorial at Laurel and has spent much of the ensuing period running in stakes company. Alex Cintron — winning at a 25 percent clip at Delaware — is up.
• Selections: 4-5-6-2

Race 8 – Claiming

• Three-year-olds and up at the $20,000 claiming level will go 1 mile 70 yards on the main track.
• In his last start the veteran #7 Marengo Road (3-1) showed little interest in running and was never involved in a grassy allowance at Delaware. Trainer Jamie Ness drops him in for $20,000 here, the lowest level at which he’s competed. In the start before that, though, he bested allowance runners at Penn National, which gets you to the question of whether the last was just one of those things, or a sign that the Quality Road ridgling is on the downside. He’s got plenty of good efforts in his past to return to, and a winning effort here would put him past the $300,000 mark. Brian Pedroza is up.
• Selections: 7-6-1-3

Arabian Watch

Thanks to Stephanie Ruff and Arabian Finish Line for giving us insights to the Arabian racing at Delaware Park.

No Arabian race today.