Delaware Park 2018 horses to watch: August 8

Off at Delaware Park. Photo © www.HoofprintsInc.com.

by Frank Vespe

Delaware Park has a nine-race card scheduled for Wednesday, August 8. Post time for the card is 1:15 p.m., and here are some horses to watch:

Race 4 – Maiden special weight

Two-year-old fillies are slated to go 7 1/2 furlongs on the turf.
Trainer Anthony Pecoraro is mounting a double-barreled attack on this race with a pair of intriguing runners. #3 Summer Vow (3-1) ran second against similar in her debut, July 18, and was gradually making up ground on the winner in the end. She’ll make her second start here today and gets meet-leading rider Carol Cedeno in the irons. Also, she will receive Lasix for the first time, and Pecoraro has a 38 percent strike rate at a big flat-bet profit when adding Lasix. Pecoraro will also send out #10 Slide a Bit (12-1). This daughter of Fort Larned didn’t show much on debut, getting thrashed while going 5 1/2 furlongs on the main track. But she switches over to the turf here, and that might make a difference; four of her siblings have won on the green stuff, among them Thunder Brew, a multiple stakes winner on the turf. Pecoraro also adds blinkers here — another angle with which he has a positive ROI — and will leg up veteran Mario Pino. Look for an improved effort from this one today.
Selections: 3-2-4-10

Race 7 – Allowance/optional claiming

Three-year-olds and up will go a mile 70 yards on the main track in a first-level allowance with an optional claiming tag of $16,000.
#6 Downhill Racer (6-1) certainly got off to a promising start in his career. The four-year-old Jump Start gelding won his first two races, taking a state-bred maiden special weight at Penn National before winning the PA-bred Pennsylvania Nursery Stakes at Parx Racing in December 2016. But, after a six-month break, he made just two starts in 2017, both in June, and then didn’t race again until July 8 of this year, when he ran ninth in the Leematt Stakes on the synthetic at Presque Isle Downs. Here he’ll return to the main track, a surface on which he has won two of three career starts. Mario Pino will ride a runner who has the right to improve in his second off a year layoff.
Trainer Jerry Robb liked #7 Ten Hut (4-1) enough to claim the five-year-old gelding back two races after he lost him via the claimbox, both times the price being $11,000. Two races after the latter claim, Ten Hut was a decisive winner over $15,000 claiming horses at Laurel Park, making him a snug fit in this company. Ten Hut has won six times on the main track and been in the top three in four of six starts at the distance. Robb will reunite Ten Hut with jockey Victor Carrasco, the pilot in his most recent win.
Selections: 6-4-7-2