Arlington-based trainer Jimmy
DiVito has always had a reputation for being very good with 2-year-olds, but
the 61-year-old Chicago-born conditioner could easily surpass his own
reputation this season.
So far this summer at
Arlington, DiVito has won with eight of his 13 juvenile starters and on
Saturday he will saddle B Jock LLC’s morning line favorite Twelve Hundred in
the Grade III Arlington-Washington Futurity and William Cox’s Ann of the Dance
in the Grade III Arlington-Washington Lassie, where she has been pegged as the
third choice in the early line.
Both Ann of the Dance and
Twelve Hundred have made two starts in their respective careers, and both are
undefeated going into their upcoming engagements this weekend.
“We’re ready to go with both
of them,” DiVito said this earlier this week. “Ann of the Dance worked
five-eighths last Saturday in 1:03.60 and Twelve Hundred breezed three-quarters
Sunday in 1:13. All we have to do now is hope they both get good trips on
Saturday.”
Trainers Tom Amoss, Manny
Perez and John Haran are the other three conditioners along with DiVito who
have horses entered in both the Futurity and the Lassie.
Amoss ships in from Kentucky
with Jerry Namy’s Shared Property for the Futurity and Always Here Too for the
Lassie. Manny Perez has Sugar Daddy Stable’s Yorona in the Futurity and
that same ownership’s Ville in the Lassie. John Haran has supplemented Eagle
Valley Farm’s Priceless
Shore to the Futurity and
his own filly Coyote Breeze to the Lassie.