WARNING: THIS ARTICLE MIGHT NOT MAKE IT ANY EASIER TO PICK DAVIS WINNER

By Mike Henry —-

OLDSMAR, FL. – When you get down to it, each of the 11 horses set to compete in the 43rd running of the Grade III, $250,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes on Saturday has a lot to prove.

“There are a lot of 3-year-olds in the race going in the right direction, and it’s time for somebody to step up,” said Saffie A. Joseph, Jr., the trainer of Peachtree Stable and WinStar Farm’s colt Prairie Hawk, who will break from the No. 2 post under leading Oldsmar jockey Samy Camacho in the mile-and-a-sixteenth “Road to the Kentucky Derby” contest. “We’re all trying to figure out how we fit.”

Eoin Harty, whose colt Groveland finished second to Prairie Hawk here on Jan. 13 in a two-turn allowance/optional claiming event, agrees that the Sam F. Davis appears wide-open. “Every horse in the race seems to be worthy of a shot,” said Harty, who has named Daniel Centeno to ride the Godolphin-bred and owned Groveland. “I don’t think there is one horse that stands out that everybody is afraid of.”

The Sam F. Davis is the 10th race on a stakes-packed, 11-race Tampa Bay Downs card beginning at 12:25 p.m. The winner will receive 20 points toward qualifying for the May 6 Kentucky Derby Presented by Woodford Reserve at Churchill Downs, with the next four finishers getting 8, 6, 4 and 2 points.

The Sam F. Davis will be directly preceded by the 2023 debut of last year’s Eclipse Award Champion 2-Year-Old Filly Wonder Wheel in the 43rd edition of the $150,000 Suncoast Stakes, for 3-year-old fillies at a distance of a mile-and-40-yards on the main track. D. J. Stable’s Wonder Wheel, who won the NetJets Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies on Nov. 4 at Keeneland to clinch championship honors, is the even-money morning-line favorite in a nine-horse field.

Tyler Gaffalione has been named to ride Wonder Wheel for trainer Mark Casse. The 5-2 second choice is trainer Todd Pletcher’s Julia Shining, who won the Grade II Demoiselle Stakes on Dec. 3 at Aqueduct and has the services of jockey Luis Saez.

The stakes action starts with the seventh race, the 42nd running of the $50,000 Minaret Stakes for fillies and mares 4-years-old-and-upward sprinting 6 furlongs on the dirt. Trainer Bill Mott’s 5-year-old, Grade II-winning mare Caramel Swirl, who was second in the Grade I Ballerina Handicap on Aug. 28 at Saratoga in her most recent start, is the 7-5 morning-line favorite in the nine-horse field. Junior Alvarado is the jockey.

The eighth race is the 39th edition of the $100,000 Pelican Stakes, for horses 4-and-upward sprinting 6 furlongs. Sibelius, a 5-year-old gelding trained by Jeremiah O’Dwyer and to be ridden by Alvarado, is the program favorite at 9-5.

While many observers say the Sam F. Davis is wide-open, this is horse racing, where there are approximately 1.5 opinions for every person involved, regardless of the subject. The morning-line handicapper has established Dubyuhnell, owned by West Paces Racing and Stonestreet Stables, a 9-5 favorite coming off his half-length victory on Dec. 3 in the Grade II, mile-and-an-eighth Remsen Stakes at Aqueduct on a sloppy track.

Dubyuhnell (2-for-3) is trained by Danny Gargan and will be ridden by Jose Ortiz, his pilot for all three starts. Gargan sounds confident the son of Good Magic will take another step forward as he vies for “Road to the Kentucky Derby” points and status as one of the top Run for the Roses contenders.

“Obviously, this is not the race we want to win most,” Gargan said of the Sam F. Davis. “But he is training really well (in south Florida) and we think he should be good enough to win, or that he will run really good.

“I was really confident before the Remsen, because when he broke his maiden (on Oct. 2 on a sloppy main track at Belmont At The Big A, in a race taken off the turf) he wasn’t getting hold of the track early. Then when Jose tipped him to the outside, he got hold of it and flew home,” Gargan said.

Gargan said he thinks Ortiz can keep Dubyuhnell in the top flight and that “he’ll be motoring late. I think he wants to go long and if the (Sam F. Davis) was a mile-and-an-eighth, I’d pretty much be guaranteeing victory. I think we’ll win it, but this race is not our long-term goal.”

World-class trainers are well-represented in the Sam F. Davis. Pletcher, who has won the race a record six times, has entered Litigate, who finished second on Jan. 8 at Gulfstream in an allowance/optional claiming race. Luis Saez is the jockey. Bill Mott has Classic Legacy, who broke his maiden in impressive fashion on Dec. 3 at Aqueduct on the Remsen undercard and will be ridden by Alvarado.

Casse has both Champions Dream, who won the Grade III Nashua Stakes on Nov. 6 at Aqueduct and finished second here on Jan. 14 in the Pasco Stakes, and the Florida-bred gelding Classic Car Wash, a two-time winner. Gaffalione will ride Champions Dream and Emisael Jaramillo is named on Classic Car Wash.

George R. “Rusty” Arnold will send out Laver, a son of Bernardini, seeking to bounce back from a fifth-place finish on Jan. 1 at Gulfstream in the Mucho Macho Man Stakes. Jose Morales is the jockey.

Know what’s kind of funny about this wide-open race, in which Dubyuhnell still might be a short-priced favorite? We’ve yet to mention the Pasco Stakes winner Zydeceaux, the Florida-bred gelding who is the only horse in the field with three lifetime victories, or Mucho Macho Man Stakes winner Dreaming of Kona, owned (in partnership) and trained by Aldana Spieth and ridden by her husband, Scott Spieth.

Or trainer Mike Maker’s colt Worthington, who has made all four starts on the turf, with two victories and two thirds, picking an ambitious spot for his first dirt effort.

“He’s been training super on (the dirt, at Palm Meadows Training Center in Boynton Beach), so hopefully he will run on it as good as he trains,” said Maker, who has named Pablo Morales to ride Worthington. “He’s got the rail and he has some speed, so we’ll try to take advantage and take the shortest distance around.”

In a race where 10 others have their own plans for victory, it seems to be anyone’s guess who gets the trophy.

Notah has been scratched from the Sam F. Davis, his connections opting to run the late-developing colt in Sunday’s sixth race, an allowance/optional claiming event, against the well-regarded Pletcher trainees Kingsbarns and Cuvier and four others.

Gallardo is Boot Barn Jockey of the Month. Antonio Gallardo has scaled numerous peaks since his “Hello, World!” moment on Aug. 24, 2013 at Calder Race Course, when he won four consecutive stakes races, including three in a row for trainer Kathleen O’Connell.

In effect, that performance launched an extended period of excellence for the 35-year-old Spaniard, whose recent winning ways earned him the Boot Barn Jockey of the Month Award. He arrived three months later at Tampa Bay Downs, where he won the first of three successive jockey titles (and five overall) with 124 winners. The following season, 2014-2015, he won 147 races, eclipsing six-time Oldsmar champ Daniel Centeno’s track record of 144.

The hits kept coming during the summer months at Presque Isle Downs in Erie, Pa., where he won his first of four titles in 2014. Under then-agent Mike Moran, Gallardo kept his foot on the gas, winning a combined 652 races in 2015-2016 while finishing second both years in the North American win standings.

As the victories kept mounting, so did the chance to ride better horses. In July of 2016, he grabbed his first graded-stakes victory aboard Front Pocket Money in the Jersey Shore Stakes. That began an ongoing streak of seven years in a row with at least one graded victory, highlighted by the Grade I United Nations Stakes in 2018 at Monmouth on Funtastic for trainer Chad Brown.

It’s been three years since he has won a Tampa Bay Downs crown, and with 21 victories (tied for fifth place), he’s likely too far behind leader Samy Camacho’s 53 to make a run. But Gallardo wants to assure his fans, and anyone else paying attention, that a 2022 campaign in which he rode 144 winners while amassing mount earnings in excess of $5.1-million does not represent a drop-off.

“This business is pretty tough – people love you, then they don’t love you the next year (or sooner),” Gallardo said. “I think riding at Presque Isle Downs and Canada (Woodbine, where he won the Grade III Ontario Matron Stakes in October on Kate’s Kingdom), people here forget about me a little bit, because there are not a lot of trainers here from those tracks.

“But I’m happy. I don’t ride (as much as he would like), but I’m winning – going cold, getting hot, cold, hot – but it is what it is. It’s open for everybody. Everything can change and you can be on top again. I’m healthy, I’m good with my family and I have a good life, and I know when I have the horse, I’m there,” Gallardo said.

Gallardo agrees it’s fun to sometimes reflect on past glory. But when it comes to discussing his already considerable career accomplishments, he believes those afternoons when he and wife Polliana take out the scrapbook to reminisce are a long way in the future.

“It’s nice to look back, but the problem is you can start looking back too much and start asking yourself too many questions,” said Gallardo. “You have to stay positive, keep working hard and try not to make mistakes. You can never give up,” said Gallardo, whose five Oldsmar titles trails only Centeno and Mike Manganello.

Gallardo, who has two stakes victories at the meet, rode 43 winners last year at Woodbine and 76 at Presque Isle Downs, finishing second there to Pablo Morales. He has mounts in two of Saturday’s Festival Preview Day stakes races – on Ticker Tape Home in the $150,000 Suncoast Stakes for 3-year-old fillies and on 5-year-old mare Zainalarab in the $50,000 Minaret Stakes.

His ride in the Grade III, $250,000 Sam F. Davis Stakes, Notah, has been scratched, another reminder there is only so much any good jockey can control, when you get down to it.

Antonio and Polliana live with their children Carlos, 14, and Christa, 9, on their farm in nearby Odessa, where they accept layup horses from the track and Polliana gives riding lessons. Right now, they are far too active to stroll down memory lane, as he awaits the next big horse on his personal journey.

Around the oval. Alonso Quinonez and Samy Camacho each rode two winners today. Quinonez won the second race on Exacting, a 4-year-old gelding owned by M J M Stable and trained by Victor Carrasco, Jr. The jockey came right back in the third on Magicgirl, a 6-year-old mare owned by A.O.M Racing Stables and trained by Pedro Posadas.

Camacho, the track’s leading jockey with 53 winners, won the first on Lookin’ Super, a 3-year-old Florida-bred gelding owned by Majestic Racing and Winning Stables and trained by Gerald Bennett. Camacho added the fourth with Ghostinyou, a 4-year-old gelding owned by Saffie A. Joseph, Jr., Ten Twenty Racing and Paraiso Investments and trained by Joseph.

Mike Henry

Publicity Assistant