Two at Toga (2025)

[moses]

Originally Posted by moses

$40.00 wagered.
$40.70 returned.

Alexis Zorba ran 2nd and paid $3.90. Edict wasn’t good enough.

Today.

Race 7. #5 Spirited Boss, 6/1. I like his earlier sprint races. Other than last out on the dirt, he seems to break well and I think Johnny V will put him in good position. He beat Classic Q a few back so he’s got some turf talent, the question is if he’ll prefer the shorter distance. I suspect he’ll get ignored on the tote board and drift above 6/1.

Race 5. #3 Ragtime Sizzle, 8/1. Fresh off the claim, this one gets wheeled back in 8 days. The race looks like there’s little pace but I expect the #4 Low Key and the #6 Another Cleeshay to apply some pressure up front. If Kantarmaci can win that race yesterday, this one fits a lot better on figures even if Ragtime sizzle is jumping up from MCL20K to CLM100K. This field isn’t very good and the upset is definitely possible here.

Spirited Boss is scratched out of the 7th but I'm going to stay in that race. I'll probably put her in the winner's circle but I really don't like the ML favorite #1 Make Haste. Her win last out was against significantly weaker horses. Two back, she just wasn't good enough against two horses that are in this race and I view Cloe as the horse to beat and she may run away with it, though my hope is to beat her at a big price. I'm going to end up on #2 Italian Soiree, 12/1. Looking through her replays, I don't think she's a horse that likes to rate and she never looked comfortable to me in her turf routes. To me, she'll benefit from being able to just run out of the gate at this shorter distance and let loose. She's got a win at 5 1/2 furlongs, albeit on dirt, but she looked comfortable that day, made a 3wide move on the turn, and just kept running. She's run against some really good turf horses at route distances and hasn't embarrassed herself. Throw out her last turf race as she got bumped very hard at the top of the stretch and jogged home. She was never in contention last out in the Jersey Girl but those were some pretty good dirt horses she was up against and that was pretty much an impossible task. The fact she put in a modest effort on what I don't think is her preferred surface further bolsters my belief that she's a sprinter and not a router. Terranova wins at 12% on turf but the average payout is over $12.00. A mild improvement with the switch back to turf puts her in contention here.