Gulfstream Park Mile (G2) Season Starting Point for Wit

By David Joseph —-

Wit, The Better Talk Now; Gulfstream Photo

Gulfstream Park Mile (G2) Season Starting Point for Wit

HALLANDALE BEACH, FL – Repole Stable, St. Elias Stable and Gainesway Stable’s Wit, a stakes winner on both turf and dirt, will be back on the main track when he makes his 5-year-old debut in the $200,000 Gulfstream Park Mile (G2).

The 80th running of Gulfstream Park Mile for 4-year-olds and up is the sixth of nine stakes, eight graded, worth $1.85 million in purses on a blockbuster 14-race program headlined by the $400,000 Coolmore Fountain of Youth (G2) for 3-year-olds.

First race post time is 11:15 a.m.

A $575,000 yearling of 2020 that has finished third or better in 10 of 13 career starts, Wit has found the most success on dirt with graded-stakes wins in the 2021 Sanford (G3) and 2022 Bay Shore (G3). His most recent victory came in the one-mile Better Talk Now in August 2022, the second of six consecutive grass starts.

Wit has not run since finishing third by a length in the six-furlong Belmont Turf Sprint Oct. 7 through the slop at Aqueduct, a span of 148 days. His only other try at the distance on dirt came when he ran third in the 2021 Champagne (G1).

“We just sort of freshened him up hopefully for a good campaign this year,” Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher said. “He’s pretty versatile. He’s had success on the turf and the dirt. We just felt like we wanted to give him another try on the dirt. He’s one of those horses where you can go a lot of different directions with. He’s pretty versatile, so we’ll see how he does in here and that’ll kind of determine what we do moving forward.”

Pletcher is chasing a seventh win in the Gulfstream Park Mile following Fearless (2021), Prince Lucky (2019), Blofeld (2016), Palace Malice (2014), Discreet Dancer (2013) and Harlington (2006). Like Wit, Fearless was also owned by Mike Repole.

In addition to the Champagne, Wit ran third in the 2022 Hollywood Derby (G1) at Del Mar and was only beaten 3 ½ lengths in the $1 million Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitational (G1) in 2023, both at 1 1/8 miles. He has won at distances from 5 ½ furlongs to one mile.

“We’re just kind of trying to find exactly what his specialty is,” Pletcher said. “If he does well going a mile on the dirt, it opens up a lot of an options moving forward.”

Irad Ortiz Jr. is named on Wit from Post 2 in a field of eight.

Amerman Racing’s Tumbarumba has raced twice at one mile, both of them stakes wins – the 2023 Ellis Park Derby and the Jan. 27 Fred W. Hooper (G3) on the undercard of the Pegasus World Cup (G1) at Gulfstream, rallying between horses to edge Castle Chaos by a nose. Castle Chaos and third-place finisher Steal Sunshine also return in the Gulfstream Park Mile.

“I think he’s come off his last race and he’s never been as good as he is right now,” trainer Brian Lynch said. “He’s another one I’m excited about. You know he’s going to give everything he’s got.”

Tumbarumba is by Oscar Performance, also bred and owned by John Amerman and trained by Lynch to eight wins, four in Grade 1 races, and more than $2.3 million in purse earnings from 2016-18. Lynch has 18 wins from 61 starters at the Championship Meet, a 30 percent success rate.

“This was just the ideal race to bring him back in,” he said. “I think as the summer goes on we’re going to experiment running him a little bit further, and I think he’s up for that.”

Lynch is an Australian native who came to North America in 1986 to ride bulls on the rodeo circuit and later transitioned to training Quarter Horses and Thoroughbreds, the latter in 1992, going out on his own after working as an assistant for late Hall of Famer Bobby Frankel. Tumbarumba is the name of a town in New South Wales, Australia.

“It’s a little town up in the mountains about an hour away from where I grew up in another little town called Wagga Wagga,” Lynch said. “I spent a lot of time there as a kid. It has a New Year’s Day rodeo. I used to ride that thing from when I was a kid. That town always brought back a lot of memories. I always loved the ring of it, Tumbarumba. It’s an aboriginal term for thunder.”

Luis Saez has the call on Tumbarumba from Post 5 at topweight of 124 pounds.

Il Miracolo, winner of the 2023 Smarty Jones (G3) for Gulfstream-based trainer Antonio Sano; Grade 1-placed Gilmore, seventh in the Hooper; Shaq Diesel, riding a two-race win streak; and Ticking complete the field.

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