God's Tipster's Thursday Aqueduct Pick: The 5th is turf route for New York breds with a John Kimmel contender
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Wednesday’s Race Recap from Keeneland:
(All odds US)
Replays for Wednesday’s races from Keeneland can be found here:
Keeneland:
Race 5: 7th@ 13.22/1
Race 6: 3rd@ 4.31/1
Race 7: 9th@ 13.28/1
In Race 5, Spin Wheel broke from the rail and was hard restrained by Julien Leparoux throughout finally getting some room to run when it was too late. I’m looking forward to the day they decide to use another jockey on this guy because I think he has some talent which is more than I can say for his rider. In Race 6, Fight Fiercely was with the early pace and battled on, taking the lead from the outside briefly on the far turn while battling wide with two runners inside of him. Eventually the inside runners pulled away and Fight Fiercely settled for third. In Race 7, I took a stand against heavily favored Flirting Bridge but she was too good for this field. Lady Puchi had a wide trip and checked in 9th.
We’ve got beautiful weather seemingly across the U.S. today and I want to take a trip up north to Aqueduct where we’ve enjoyed a very profitable last few years. Fast and firm conditions are expected. Let’s light the fuse on a sunny New York Thursday afternoon at the races!
Aqueduct:
Race 5: Starquist - 1 pt win (US Morning Line Odds: 8/1)
Allowance runners bred in New York race a mile and a sixteenth on the lawn. I don’t love any of the runners with experience on the turf who are a combined 12 for 88 over the surface so I’m looking squarely at Starquist who will be making his debut on grass. Starquist won his debut race (something I always like to see) but prior to that debut effort he had worked three times over the turf. Maybe it was part of the training regimen to get him that debut win or maybe they wanted to see if he’d handle it but it’s nice to see he’s at least set foot on the turf a few times. Starquist spent the winter placing in several New York bred stakes races running well both sprinting and routing. He’s bred for the surface switch as his second dam was stakes placed on turf and trainer John Kimmel, who started the year slow, has won with 14% of his three-year-old non-first-time-starters making their turf debut in a route race at an average payoff of $50.50. I don’t quite think we’ll get 25/1 but the 8/1 morning line sounds fair to me.
Best of luck to all our members playing Thursday’s races from Aqueduct!