Wide-open races in New York, Kentucky

From NYRA (edited)

Beau Dare, Quality Affair and Your Flame in Me represent half the field in Saturday’s $150,000 Distaff Handicap for fillies and mares at Aqueduct. They also represent a phalanx of early speed at six furlong that set up the race to be won from off the pace.

Rite Moment, purchased last December, has turned out to be a tremendous buy for Winning Move Stable and trainer Gary Contessa. An unremarkable allowance horse in Chicago last fall, Rite Moment has transformed herself into a stakes winner for her new connections. The four-year-old filly comes into New York’s first Grade 2 race of the year off an impressive 13¼-length triumph in the overnight Limit Stakes on March 6.

“We bought her relatively cheap hoping she’d turn out to be a solid $50,000 claimer,” Contessa said. “When she came across the fax machine ‘For Sale’ we were very excited because she’s the kind of horse that fits well here in the winter.”

Contessa and Steve Sigler of Winning Move Stable were delighted with the Vicar filly’s first start in New York, a three-length allowance win from off the pace. She followed that up with a second-level allowance win by 6 ½ lengths before running in the February 9 Correction Handicap.

Coming from farther back than usual, Rite Moment rallied to finish a half-length behind gate-to-wire winner Beau Dare in the Correction.

“She really should be four-for-four for us,” Contessa said. “She was the best horse in the Correction. She came out of the gate five lengths behind the rest of the field. She was basically eliminated at the start and ran a phenomenal race. This filly has exceeded every expectation we’ve had of her.”

Returning to the inner track after running second to Golden Dawn in the Grade 2 Barbara Fritchie at Laurel last month is Control System. A handy winner of the Garland O’ Roses and the Interborough, the Lion Hearted filly disappointed as the even-money favorite with a six-length defeat.

Control System is one of two Distaff runners trained by Laurel-based Mike Trombetta, who will also send up Your Flame in Me. The latter came a nose short of winning the Raise Heck here in December and has never let another horse get an early lead on her in any of her eight starts. The Boundary filly started her career three-for-three and won her last race over Aqueduct’s main track in the Lady Tak on November 10.

The speedy Beau Dare has enjoyed a solid winter, winning an allowance the day after Christmas and then taking the Correction Handicap. Previously a turf horse, trainer Bruce Levine switched her to the dirt and was rewarded with immediate results. Beau Dare figures to be caught up in a lively pace battle, but if she can chase and finish, her chances may not be compromised by the other speed in the race.

Shipping up from Florida is Quality Affair, who comes off a front-running allowance win in a five-furlong off-the-turf race.

Scatkey jumps out of New York-bred company for the first time since May. While she does not seem as fast as Rite Moment or Control System, the five-year-old mare’s off-the-pace style could make her a stretch factor in the Distaff.

At the races Distaff Selections:

Control System
Your Flame in Me
Rite Moment
Beau Dare

Lane’s End beneath the radar

The last winner of the often renamed race currently known as the Lane’s End to repeat in the Kentucky Derby was Lil E. Tee, in 1992, but past winners of this race, formerly run over earth now contested on the science project known as Polytrack, has been won by Hard Spun, Flower Alley, Perfect Drift, Serena’s Song, Prairie Bayou, Hansel, Summer Squall and Broad Brush. This is race won by high-class horses.

It is difficult to imagine one of the dozen entered in Saturday’s renewal of the most important race run at Turfway Park making an immediate impact on the Triple Crown seen, but winning the Lane’s End augers well for the longer term. The Lane’s End is, however, the first Derby prep televised by ESPN, which begins its coverage at 5 p.m. EDT.

Halo Najib, winner of the OBS Championship over a synthetic surface at Florida’s Ocala Training Center but a well-beaten sixth on dirt in the Fountain of Youth (GII) at Gulfstream Park, is the 7-2 morning line favorite for the nine-furlong Lane’s End, an overnight price that is illustrative of the race’s contentiousness. The Dale Romans-trained Halo Najib has run well on both synthetic surfaces and dirt, with a runner-up finish to Court Vision in Churchill Downs’ Iroquois (GIII) and a third-place finish to Smooth Air in Gulfstream’s Hutcheson (GII) on his resume.

Halo Najib is one of the few members of the Lane’s End field with strong efforts on the dirt on his record. Several entrants have done their best running so far on turf and are taking a shot because grass horses have frequently run well when making the switch to a synthetic surface like Polytrack. Two-time Kentucky Derby-winner Kent Desormeaux will ride for Romans.

“I think we’re the horse to beat, but it’s a good, even group of horses – a lot of unknowns,” Romans told the Louisville Courier-Journal. “Some of those horses, if they bring their grass form to Polytrack, they’re going to be tough. But we know our horse will run well on it.”

Trainer Todd Pletcher, a two-time Lane’s End winner, has entered Duke of De Buqe and Chitoz.

“It’s not a clear-cut picture, where last year Hard Spun was an obvious choice,” Pletcher said. “I think this one is wide-open.”

Other contenders include Ken and Sarah Ramsey’s Cannonball, an accomplished runner on grass who finished third in the inaugural Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Monmouth Park and the 9-2 second choice in the morning line odds for the Lane’s End, and Turf War, the dead-heat winner of the $1 million Delta Jackpot at Delta Downs and the only member of the field to win a graded stakes race. The Mark Casse-trained Turf War is coming off a disappointing ninth-place run behind Denis of Cork in the Southwest at Oaklawn Park and will break from the outside post.

War Pass fine in gallop

While trainer Nick Zito, among others, remains baffled by the dismal effort by former Derby favorite War Pass in last week’s Tampa Bay Derby, but the was happy with what he saw when the no longer undefeated colt returned to training on Wednesday at Florida’s Palm Meadows training center.

War Pass galloped an easy mile and Zito said the colt “looked good.” He said that efforts to find a medical reason for the last place finish to Big Truck in the seven-horse field at Tampa Bay Downs have turned up nothing new.

Zito said War Pass, the champion 2-year-old of 2007, would run next in the Wood Memorial (GI) at Aqueduct on April 5 if all continues to go well.

“We’ll keep going forward from here, plan a work and see how things are going,” Zito told Daily Racing Form. “All we can do at this point is take things one step at time.”

Aqueduct: March 22

No qualified plays