Repo Rocks makes the grade in the G3 Toboggan under Andrew Wolfsont (Joe Labozzetta)
NYRA Press Office
OZONE PARK, N.Y.— Double B Racing Stables’ Repo Rocks registered a lofty 111 Beyer Speed Figure for his last-out score in the seven-furlong Grade 3 Toboggan on January 28 at the Big A. The 5-year-old Tapiture gelding will look to stretch out one more furlong in Saturday’s $125,000 Stymie for older horses going a one-turn mile.
Trained by Jamie Ness through his last three starts, Repo Rocks has won each outing by increasing margins and with increasing Beyers while being piloted from off-the-pace by Andrew Wolfsont. He won the 6 1/2-furlong Let’s Give Thanks [96 Beyer] in November and the six-furlong Blitzen [97 Beyer] on January 4 at Parx Racing ahead of his 8 1/2-length romp in the seven-furlong Toboggan. The Toboggan victory was the first graded win for both Repo Rocks and Wolfsont and provided Ness his first stakes win on the NYRA circuit.
Repo Rocks worked a bullet half-mile solo in 47.46 seconds on February 11 at Parx in his first breeze back with Wolfsont in the irons. He will work again Monday at Parx with the Stymie to be drawn later that afternoon.
“I don’t put him in company and I don’t push him. He’s just a fast horse, and fast horses work fast,” Ness said. “He’s always been a really sound horse, so you can train him the right way. The more you ask him to do, the more he wants to give you.”
Repo Rocks, a veteran of 32 starts for a record of 7-6-6 and purse earnings of $570,871, has moved through a number of barns since starting his career with Hall of Famer Bill Mott in July 2020 at Saratoga. He was claimed by Tom Morley for $40,000 in March 2021 at the Big A and graduated that June at Belmont. Repo Rocks was haltered for $40,000 that September at Saratoga by conditioner Juan Vazquez and won a pair of races here at the end of the 2021 campaign. He was trained by Gregory DiPrima for seven starts between April and October before joining the Ness barn.
All of Repo Rocks’ wins have come at races contested between six and seven furlongs, and he has failed to hit the board in four efforts at one mile or greater with two of those efforts coming over turf.
But Ness said that a more mature Repo Rocks could excel at extended sprint distances.
“I told the owners when I got him that the horse doesn’t seem like a sprinter,” Ness said. “I’m not saying he’s a Classic distance mile and an eighth or mile and a quarter horse, but I think a one-turn mile or a mile and a sixteenth is right up his alley the way he trains.”
Bred in Virginia by Mrs. C. Oliver Iselin, III, Repo Rocks, a $70,000 purchase at the 2019 Keeneland September Yearling Sale, is out of the Not For Love mare Hawaiian Love.
