Trainer Steve Margolis, winner of
13 races from 42 starts (31-percent) at Fair Grounds and a perfect two-for-two
at Oaklawn Park (including one with Northern Belle in Sunday’s American
Beauty Stakes), is represented with logical contenders in four of Saturday’s
six stakes: 3-year-old filly Visavis in the $75,000 Tiffany Lass Stakes,
5-year-old mare Lady Chace in the $75,000 Dr. A.B. Leggio Memorial
Stakes, 3-year-old gelding Cool Bullet in the Grade III Lecomte and
4-year-old gelding Cash Refund in the $75,000 F.W. Gaudin Memorial.
Martin Cherry’s Visavis, by Indian
Charlie out of Lady Cerise, is the younger half-sister to Northern Belle, who
won here in November and finished third in the Esplanade Stakes before earning
her first stakes win at Oaklawn. Last month Visavis just missed her own first
stakes win in the final strides of the Letellier Memorial, losing by a nose to
My Jen in one of the best finishes of the season.
“She had a big race off a layoff and we
would have liked to have won but you move on,” Margolis said. “She’s a young
filly and I didn’t want to have to ship her around so we’ve been training up to
this race. She’s a filly with a lot of talent.”
Margolis will be busy Saturday
afternoon, as his four starters run in consecutive races, 8-11. After the
Tiffany Lass, Race 8, he’ll head back to the paddock to saddle Gold Square
LLC’s Lady Chace in the Leggio, Race 9. Winner of six races from 18 starts
(including a 4-2-2-0 record at Fair Grounds) and second in this race last year,
Lady Chace enters the Leggio Memorial off an easy three-length win in an
allowance over a sloppy main track at Delta Downs.
“She’s run very well over this course
and is coming off kind of an easy win,” Margolis said. “We had to freshen her
up a little after the Delaware
race (fifth in the Grade III Endine); she kind of threw a clunker in there. She
had a really good year, though. The Saratoga
race (fifth in the Grade II Honorable Miss) wasn’t bad; those were really good
horses. She won the Saylorville (at Prairie Meadows), she ran a big race in the
(Grade III) Winning Colors (at Churchill Downs, second by a length to Dubai
Majesty before being disqualified to third). We got Robby (Albarado)
to ride her, I like my post, she can kind of stalk a little bit. I think we’re
a real good fit in there.”
In the featured Grade III Lecomte, Race
10, Margolis sends out Winmore LLC and Robert & Lawana Low’s Cool Bullet,
winner of the Dec. 19 Sugar Bowl, the meet’s second open stakes race for foals
of 2007. Now owned mostly by the Lows, the Red Bullet gelding will try to go
two turns for the first time on Saturday. Last week, Margolis breezed him six
furlongs in 1:16.
“I’ve been working him longer and slower
because I know the horse has the speed, but I want to try to put some air into
him and get him to relax,” the trainer said. “I can’t look into the future but
right now he looks like a horse that can get the distance. We don’t know if he
can go a mile-and-a-quarter or anything like that, we’ve got to take it one
step at a time, but he could.”
Cool Bullet was purchased for $4,000 out
of Keeneland’s September Yearling Sale by Dave Williams, the initial
principal owner, and Ray Murray and Bob Estes. Margolis remembers
getting a call from Williams.
“It was the last or second-to-last day
of the sale,” Margolis recalled, “and he said, ‘I think we can get this horse
cheap.’ The market had fallen, there was bad weather. For whatever reason he
didn’t go for more money and I know Dave was shocked when he was able to buy
him for $4,000.”
From there Cool Bullet went to Bill
and Lynn Recio at Classic
Mile
Park
in Ocala,
Fla.
“Bill called me and said, ‘We have a
nice horse here but I think we’re going to geld him, he’s just a little full of
himself,’” Margolis said. “Being that we only paid $4,000 for the horse he went
ahead and gelded him. They took their time with him and we got the horse around
April. He was a good-looking horse. He ran a big second at Delaware
and then regressed a little bit; his shins were bugging him. We tried to get
another race into him before we pulled the plug on him and he really didn’t run
a bad race. He was fourth but the winner ended up coming back to win the
restricted (First State Dash Stakes) at Delaware.
“We gave him some time and the shins
settled down. Then for whatever reason, when the horse started training here
(at Fair Grounds) it was like the light went on.”
In Race 11, Gaudin, Richard, Bertram
& Elaine Klein’s Cash Refund could represent the best chance to defeat the
blazing fast Euroears, who dominated the Nov. 28 Thanksgiving Handicap
and posted a typical-for-him five-furlong breeze in 1:00 3/5 on Jan. 12.
Cash Refund won here Dec. 27 off a
seven-month layoff, taking a second-level allowance by a half-length as the
odds-on favorite. Prior to that, the Petionville gelding finished second by
less than a length to eventual Grade I winner Capt. Candyman Can, despite
injuring himself, in the Matt Winn Stakes at Churchill Downs.
“He had the start of just a little
fracture,” Margolis said about the layoff. “He didn’t need a surgical
procedure; it was just a little something that popped up on him and we had to
give him time off. So far so good and he hasn’t missed a beat.”
While Albarado will be aboard Lady
Chace, the other three Margolis entrants will be ridden by Brian Hernandez
Jr. That trainer-jockey combination is winning at 38-percent this meet.
“He’s a young rider who listens and he’s
got a good set of hands on him,” Margolis said. “He did really well when we
were at Delaware
and he got to ride more of my horses. He was riding well and things were
clicking and it seemed like all the horses he was riding were always right
there.”
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