Trainer Bill Kaplan confirmed Friday that
2011’s Champion Female Sprinter Musical
Romance will make her next start at Belmont Park and arrive on
Saturday, September 15 to run in the Grade 2, $200,000 Gallant Bloom Handicap on
September 22. The Gallant Bloom is run at 6 ½ furlongs.
With a record of 2-1-0 from five starts this year, Musical Romance
exits a victory in Calder’s Grade 1 Princess Rooney Handicap on July 7 at
Calder Race Course, her home track. Considered for a start in Saratoga’s
Grade 1 Ballerina on August 24, the 5-year-old daughter of Concorde’s
Tune skipped the race because transportation from Florida
to New York
proved to be a challenge.
“The reason we didn’t run in Saratoga or at Presque Isle [in the Presque
Isle Downs Masters Stakes on September 8] was that we couldn’t find
transportation,” Kaplan said by phone. “It’s cooler now, and
she’s going to ship up by private van. She’s supposed to get in at
7 a.m. tomorrow.”
Kaplan said he would arrive in New
York late next week and that his assistant, Alfredo
Guzman, would travel with the mare.
“She’s doing very well,” Kaplan said of Musical Romance,
who breezed five furlongs on Wednesday at Calder in 1:00.20 under regular
jockey Juan Leyva. “I’m from New
York and it will be nice to get back and run
there.”
Kaplan has not run a horse at a NYRA track since July 1, 2008, when he
had a string at Belmont
Park during the
spring/summer meet.