Gear Jockey winning the 2021 edition of the Grade 3 FanDuel Turf Sprint. (Coady Photography)
By Mike Kane
FRANKLIN, Ky.– Trainer Rusty Arnold has seen his plans for three horses pointed to FanDuel Meet at Kentucky Downs for stakes on Saturday get scrambled.
BBN Racing’s Sweet Cherry Pie is set for the $500,000 Grade 2 Exacta Systems Franklin-Simpson Stakes but will debut in a graded stakes without grass experience. Calumet Farm’s Gear Jockey, back in the race he won two years ago, will run in the $1 million Grade 2 Ainsworth Turf Stakes off just one start this season. And Calumet’s stakes veteran Cellist, the runner-up in the Kentucky Downs Prevue for the $1.7 million, Grade 2 FanDuel Kentucky Turf Cup at Ellis Park, landed on the also-eligible list and will need two defections to get in the starting gate.
“Sweet Cherry Pie has been just dying to get on the grass,” Arnold said. “He’s a Twirling Candy out of a Kitten’s Joy mare (Sweet Cat), who was third in the Breeders’ Cup. He has done very well on the dirt, but we had a plan to get him to Monmouth to get him on the turf. It rained it off. We ran him, he won and by doing that we thought we would get in this race. We’re very excited about running him. He’s shown a lot of ability and he is doing very well.”
Sweet Cherry Pie won the ungraded My Frenchman at Monmouth on July 16 by four lengths in the slop. He broke slowly in his debut and ended up fourth. Since then, he has hit the board all four times at four different tracks. He drew post 7 and will be ridden for the first time by Irad Ortiz Jr.
The 6-year-old Gear Jockey won the Turf Sprint by 2 ½ lengths in 2021. That was his last win, but he has finished in the top three in 12 of 23 career starts and with $996,971 in earnings could become a millionaire Saturday.
“He went off form for me at the end of last year, after running some good races,” Arnold said. “He didn’t win them, but he ran well. We turned him out over the winter, picked him back up and we’ve had a little bit of a disaster of a year. He was a horse I had in earlier at Ellis Park, but when I got him down there, they called and said they had left the sprinklers on all night. We had to scratch, didn’t get to run. We picked him up, made a new plan, took him to Virginia. I think I kind of halfway got him there the wrong way.”
In the 5 ½ furlong Van Clief at Colonial Downs on July 22, he was in contention early but ended up a well-beaten sixth.
“He’s come back to the track where he has run his best and we’re looking for him to turn that form around, hopefully, on Saturday,” Arnold said.
Jose Lezcano, who was up for the win at Kentucky Downs to years ago, returns to the saddle.
If Cellist gets into the field for the 1 1/2-mile FanDuel Kentucky Turf Cup, he will be wearing the No. 14 saddle towel. Arnold will have him ready and is optimistic that he will draw into the race out of AE land.
“That was a tough pill to swallow,” Arnold said. “I wasn’t looking for that. We’re going to pretend that we’re getting him in. We’re going to put him on a van and send him down there. There may be a horse or two that might think about cross-entering in Virginia. I’m not sure. We’re not going to because we wanted to run here. Different things happen. Some horses get sick, the veterinarians scratch one a race. The worst thing that’s going to happen is he’s going to sit at Kentucky Downs all day and take a van home.”
The Kentucky Turf Cup is a Breeders’ Cup “Win and You’re In” Challenge Series race, with the winner getting a fees-paid berth in the $4 million Longines Breeders’ Cup Turf. The six-furlong Ainsworth Turf Sprint is a Challenge Series race for the $1 million Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Santa Anita.
