Champion Jockey Toledo Returns at Winner Sunday at Laurel
Champion Jockey Toledo Returns at Winner Sunday at Laurel
Earned Second Career Graded Win Saturday in Arlington Handicap (G3)
Multiple Stakes Winner Greatbullsoffire Working His Way Back
LAUREL, MD – Fresh off the second graded-stakes win of his young career, jockey Jevian Toledo picked up right where he left off upon his return to Laurel Park for Sunday’s 10-race program.
Toledo, 23, came up the inside to guide Silhouette LLC’s Bowsprit ($8.80) to victory in the third race, a $24,000 starter optional claimer over the Fort Marcy turf course. The outcome gave him a one-win edge, 15-14, over Horacio Karamanos in the current summer meet standings.
It was the first mount for Toledo since traveling to Chicago Saturday to ride Gunpowder Farms’ multiple Grade 1 winner Divisidero in the Arlington Handicap (G3) for Fair Hill, Md.-based trainer Kelly Rubley. Racing widest of all, Divisidero held off Revved Up and Synchrony in a stirring stretch duel to take the 1 3/16-mile turf stakes by a half-length.
Toledo’s previous graded-stakes victory came aboard Miss Behaviour in the September 2014 Charles Town Oaks (G3).
“Hopefully, there will be many more to come,” Toledo said following his win Sunday, which came for trainer Milan Milosevic. “I have to thank the owner and the trainer for the opportunity. Thank God, everything worked out. I’m so happy. He’s a really nice horse.”
Toledo has ridden Divisidero in each of his three starts since being moved to Rubley’s care earlier this year. They finished second in the Monmouth Stakes (G2) May 28 and fourth in the Wise Dan Stakes (G2) June 16 at Churchill Downs.
“He’s such a nice horse,” Toledo said. “The two times before, I think the horse needed the race. Yesterday, everything worked out perfect. I was in a great spot the entire way and when I asked him, he gave me everything he had like he always does.”
Toledo led all Maryland riders in wins in 2015 and 2017, and finished second in 2016. A four-time meet champion, the most recent coming at Laurel’s 2017 year-ending fall stand, he missed seven weeks with compression fractures of his T7 and T8 vertebrae and a collapsed lung suffered in a Jan. 20 spill during training hours at Laurel.’
The Arlington Handicap was the first graded-stakes win for Rubley, a former schoolteacher and administrator in western New York and assistant to Barclay Tagg and Jimmy Toner, in her fifth year of training on her own.
Multiple Stakes Winner Greatbullsoffire Working His Way Back
Kathleen Willier’s Greatbullsoffire, a three-time stakes winner at 2 who raced just once last year, had the first timed work this weekend at Laurel as he prepares for his comeback.
The 4-year-old Maryland-bred son of Grade 1 winner Bullsbay breezed three furlongs in 37.80 seconds Saturday for trainer Hamilton Smith.
“We just gave him an easy work to see how he handled that and, fitness-wise, see how good he was. He came off the farm in Pennsylvania a little heavy but we’re getting him started,” Smith said following Sunday’s opener. “It looked like he handled it good so we’ll pick his works up from now on.”
Greatbullsoffire won four of six starts in 2016 as a juvenile, including the Strike Your Colors Stakes, Maryland Million Nursery and Maryland Juvenile Futurity, the latter two at Laurel. His sophomore campaign was delayed and ultimately ended prematurely with bone bruising, his only start coming in the Coalition Stakes last August at Timonium, where he finished eighth.
“He had bone bruises. That’s what they vets called them. If you don’t give them ample time then they won’t heal right,” Smith said. “We brought him back a little quick last year and only got a chance to run him once and it reoccurred so we gave him more time.
“So far he’s looking good. We just hope he holds together. He’s a nice-looking colt, and he can run, too,” he added. “We’re looking at the Maryland-bred stuff, Maryland Million and all that, if he’s good enough. If he comes back to his old form, he’ll be good enough.”
Notes: Summer meet-leading trainer Claudio Gonzalez won two of the first four races Sunday with Hashtag Selfie ($3.80) in the second and Asphalt Paving ($5.20) in the fourth … Live racing returns to Laurel with a 10-race card Friday, July 13. First-race post time is 1:10 p.m.
