Photo: CDI
Sophomore star Suntracer,
who races in the green and yellow silks of Team Block, challenges
nine others – mostly his elders – in Monday’s Fair Grounds feature, the
fifth renewal of the
$75,000 “Buddy” Diliberto Memorial Handicap, scheduled for about 1 1/16 miles over the
Stall-Wilson turf course.
Named
in honor of the late local newspaper, television and radio personality,
the “Buddy” Diliberto Memorial is the headline event on the
only Monday racing program of the season at Fair
Grounds, which will be re-opening that day following a brief holiday
hiatus that began following Friday’s races.
Suntracer, who won Fair Grounds’
$75,000 Woodchopper Stakes in his last start Nov. 25, finished second to All In Stable’s
Willcox Inn in Chicago’s
Grade III Hawthorne Derby at previous asking Oct. 15 and was runner-up to that same rival in the
Grade II American Derby and Arlington Classic earlier last summer at
Arlington
Park.
Suntracer, trained by
Neil Pessin, will be ridden by Fair Grounds’ defending jockey champion
Rosie Napravnik,
who was aboard for the Woodchopper win. The son of Kitten’s Joy has
been installed as the lukewarm 7-2 choice in the Diliberto morning line.
Likely to provide strong competition for Suntracer is Cherrywood Stables II and Terry Biondo’s
Princeville Condo, who won the Diliberto two years ago and seemed
primed for an assault on Fair Grounds’ grass series for older horses
before having to undergo throat
surgery for a displaced palate.
Although presently ensconced in the barn of
Greg Geier for the winter,
Princeville Condo comes into the Diliberto off a half-length win in
Hawthorne’s $64,000 Robert F. Caray Memorial Oct. 8, when he was under
the tutelage of part-owner
Michele Boyce. During his last two summer campaigns in
Illinois, Princeville Condo has twice finished a close second in
Arlington’s restricted $90,000 Black Tie Affair Handicap. Fair Grounds’ seven-time jockey champion
Robby Albarado will be in the irons on the 4-1 second choice in the early line.
Princeville Condo will shoulder the top impost of 121 pounds in the Diliberto, while the 3-year-old Suntracer gets in with 116.
Completing Monday’s Diliberto field, with jockeys and weights assigned, is: William Butler’s
Al Muhtasib, Victor Lebron, 114; John Wade’s
Pedrolino, Florent Geroux, 114; Chester Miller and Patrick Dupuy’s
Strike Impact, Miguel Mena, 119; Lael Stables’
Ready Set, Brian Hernandez Jr., 120; Andrews T & S Racing’s
Mr. Vegas, James Graham, 114; Jay Em Ess Stable’s
Worldly, Corey Lanerie, 114; Dwight Sprague’s
Cactus Son, Shane Sellers, 111; and Charles Fletcher’s
Baltimore Bob, Richard Eramia, 118.