Apprentice Jockey Crispin, Among Finalists, to Learn Eclipse Fate
Rainbow 6, Late Pick 5 Carryovers for Friday Return to Racing

LAUREL, MD – It was only about an hour before sunset when the sunshine blazed forth on a late winter afternoon at Laurel Park.

Always Sunshine, a Florida homebred of Gil Campbell’s Stonehedge LLC trained by Pimlico Race Course-based septuagenarian Edward T. ‘Ned’ Allard, made his triumphant 9-year-old debut Jan. 24 off a 541-day gap between races.

Guided by jockey Carol Cedeno, his regular rider since the spring of 2019, Always Sunshine recovered from a slight outward bobble at the start of the 5 ½-furlong optional claiming allowance for 4-year-olds and up to press Stroll Smokin into the stretch. It wasn’t until midway through the lane when the West Acre gelding out of the Awesome Again mare Sunny Again was able to clear the favored pacesetter and edge away to a 1 ¼-length victory.

“Carol knows the horse real well. She’s ridden him a number of times. He can go to the lead if you want him to, but he seems like he runs a much better race if you let him get his act together, and he always fires big if you have him in a good spot,” Allard said.

“Around the sixteenth pole I thought, ‘We’re not going to get by this gray horse.’ I said to Carol afterwards, ‘I was afraid you wouldn’t get by that horse,’ and she said, ‘I really hadn’t asked him yet,’” he added. “She had a ton of confidence in him.”

It was the 11th career win from 31 starts dating back to his rookie season of 2015 for Always Sunshine, who boosted his bankroll past $650,000. It may have been one of the most satisfying of 2,724 career wins for the 75-year-old Allard, a New England native best known for his work with Hall of Famer Mom’s Command.

“I didn’t want to start him off in a stake after a year and a half and being a 9-year-old. I wanted to try to find something a little softer, and I thought that was a pretty good spot,” Allard said. “Although, it was still a very competitive spot and he still needed to come up with a good race to beat those horses, which he did. So, I was tickled pink.”

Always Sunshine hadn’t raced since earning his fifth career stakes victory in the Senator Robert C. Byrd Memorial Aug. 3, 2019 at Mountaineer. It came just over a year after capturing the Tale of the Cat at Saratoga and well after earning his first-ever stakes triumph in the 2015 Dave’s Friend at Laurel. Always Sunshine became a graded winner in the 2016 Maryland Sprint (G3) on the undercard of the 141st Preakness (G1).

“In September of 2019, instead of going to the Tale of the Cat which we had won the year before, I thought the Tale of the Cat came up a lot tougher than the year that I won it,” Allard said. “So, I chose to go for a little less money at Mountaineer. He won very nicely with Carol on him. He came out of the race not 100 percent sound, but nothing major. We couldn’t find anything on X-rays, we couldn’t really find anything on an ultrasound, but he was definitely off.

“We gave him some time off and put him back in training and the same thing cropped up on him again,” he added. “So, we gave him practically a year off on Mr. Campbell’s farm in Williston, Florida and put him back in training. He’s been in training for the last five months and he’s been training super, so I was real pleased.”

The final time for Always Sunshine’s comeback victory was 1:02.91, three-fifths of a second off the Laurel track record of 1:02.20 set in October 2018 by 6-year-old Siralfredthegreat.

“He just needed some time off. It wasn’t really a big deal,” Allard said. “He seemed to come out of his race really well.”

The decision on what’s next for Always Sunshine will be left up to the horse, Allard said. Laurel’s $250,000 General’s Stake (G3) at seven furlongs is Feb. 13, a span of just three weeks. The next open stake for older sprinters in Maryland is the $100,000 Frank Whiteley, also going seven furlongs, April 17.

“That’s a good question. As a 9-year-old you have to be a little more careful. We’ll just have to see how it plays out. Who knows. I might be back in again for [$50,000]; then again maybe we’ll look for a stake,” Allard said. “He just ran a monster race, and I haven’t completely swallowed it yet. I was hoping he’d run really well and I thought that he would but you still have to go out there and prove it. So often, we’re wrong a lot more than we’re right, that’s for sure.”

Allard, inducted into the New England Turf Writers’ Hall of Fame in 2009, has been thrilled with his decision to stable at Pimlico after spending last winter in Tampa, Fla. Based at Delaware Park from spring to early fall, he has two wins, one second and two thirds in five 2021 starts, all at Laurel.

“When Delaware closed, I thought the logical spot was to go to Maryland,” Allard said. “I started in 1970 and I think I’ve won over 150 stakes and I don’t know how many stakes I’ve won in Maryland, but Maryland has always been very good to me. I’m there and I’m happy and things are going well.”

Apprentice Jockey Crispin, Among Finalists, to Learn Eclipse Fate

Tonight’s 50th Eclipse Awards ceremony, held virtually for the first time in its history, will be televised live on the TVG and RTN networks starting at 8 p.m.

Hosted by Gulfstream Park the previous eight years, the ceremony is also being live streamed on several platforms including ntra.com, drf.com, bloodhorse.com, equibase.com, thoroughbreddailynews.com and toba.org.

The ceremony will also be available on the Facebook pages of XBTV, America’s Best Racing, Breeders’ Cup and MyRacehorse, as well ABR’s Twitter feed and Breeders’ Cup and MyRacehorse YouTube channels.

Laurel Park-based Alexander Crispin is among three finalists for the Eclipse Award as champion apprentice of 2020. Maryland-based riders have won the award 11 times, the most recent being Weston Hamilton in 2018.

According to Equibase statistics, Crispin ranked second among apprentice finalists in wins (103) and purse earnings ($2.194 million). Yarmarie Correa, based in the Midwest, had 118 wins and a $1.755 million bankroll in 2020 while New York-based Luis Cardenas had 41 wins and $2.23 million in purses earned.

Crispin has mounts in six of eight races when live racing returns to Laurel Friday, Jan. 29, and seven of nine races Saturday. The 22-year-old Puerto Rico native leads the current winter meet which began Jan. 1 with 20 wins and $477,944 in purse earnings.

Rainbow 6, Late Pick 5 Carryovers for Friday Return to Racing

There will be carryovers in the 20-cent Rainbow 6 and 50-cent Late Pick 5 when live racing returns to Laurel Park with an eight-race program Friday.

First race post time is 12:25 p.m.

Neither popular multi-race wager was solved during the last live program Sunday, Jan. 24, resulting in jackpot carryovers of $13,725.17 in the Rainbow 6 (Races 3-8) and $7,988.64 in the Late Pick 5 (Races 4-8).

Both sequences include Friday’s features – a second-level optional claiming allowance for older females sprinting six furlongs in Race 7, and an entry-level optional claiming allowance for fillies and mares 3 and up going a mile in Race 8 led by 5-2 program favorite Fraudulent Charge, beaten a nose by multiple stakes winner Street Lute last out in the Dec. 26 Gin Talking.

Laurel’s Friday finale also launches the weekly national $1 Stronach 5 wager, which continues with Races 8 and 9 from Gulfstream Park and Race 3 from Golden Gate Fields and concludes with Gulfstream’s Race 10.

Nine races are on tap for Saturday at Laurel highlighted by a third-level optional claiming allowance for older horses at one mile in Race 8. Among the field of eight are multiple stakes winner Alwaysmining, ninth as defending champion in the Jan. 16 Jennings, his first race in nearly six months; Honor the Fleet, winner of the Fire Plug last January at Laurel; fellow stakes winner Saratoga Jack; Zabracadabra, bred in the state of Washington, and Ontario-bred Nottoway, both riding two-race win streaks.