Fleetheart Returns
– Fleetheart, emerging star of the SoCal allowance ranks, returns to the track in Hollywood’s first race on Wednesday. The four-year-old filly is a perfect 3-for-3 since beginning her career last October and has shown considerable toughness and talent in all of her starts. She’s stretching out from six furlongs to 1 1/16 miles for the first time and it looks like she’ll have some competition from Fun Logic, breaking to her outside, who won at the distance two starts back. But Fleetheart also looks like the lone speed in this five-horse field, and she should have no problem handling the distance, being by Northern Afleet, sire of Afleet Alex, and out of Guarded Optomist, an unraced Spend a Buck mare with five winners out of six foals to race, including Guardianofthegate, winner of the 1 1/8 miles Columbia Stakes (on the turf) at Tampa back in 2003. If she wins on Wednesday, a Del Mar stakes appearance could be next on Fleetheart’s schedule. “Hopefully, she’ll do well and we’ll have that thought to ponder,” said trainer Vladimir Cerin (DRF).
– Steve Davidowitz writes of synthetic surfaces, “We are more than two years into American racing’s experiments with artificial racing surfaces and it is impossible to make a single coherent statement about them” (TrackMaster, via). Actually, there is one coherent thing to be said about the synthetic experiment: Handicappers have to throw out everything they know about speed handicapping. It’s not that speed is suddenly irrelevant on Polytrack or Cushion Track, but that class and pace are more prominent factors.
