Tattooed Snags Elusive Stakes Victory in $75,000 Jennings
Tattooed Snags Elusive Stakes Victory in $75,000 Jennings
Gale Blows Away Rivals to Become Stakes Winner in $75,000 Geisha
LAUREL, MD – Holt, Montuori and Palumbo Racing Stable’s 6-year-old gelding Tattooed, making his 32nd career start, became a stakes winner for the first time with a rallying neck triumph over Galerio in Saturday’s $75,000 Jennings at Laurel Park.
The 79th running of the Jennings for 4-year-olds and up and 48th edition of the $75,000 Geisha for females 4 and older, both restricted to Maryland-bred/sired horses, were among six stakes worth $550,000 in purses on a Winter Carnival program that opened Maryland’s 2021 stakes calendar.
Ridden by Angel Cruz for trainer Tim Keefe, who also teamed up to take Saturday’s opener with 4-year-old maiden Johng, Tattooed ($23.80) ran one mile in 1:37.46 over a main track rated good for his sixth career victory, all at Laurel. He has run in the past three editions of the Maryland Million Classic, finishing third last fall.
“The key is really patient owners. They’ve been great and let me do what I do best and that’s be patient with an older horse like this just to try to get him to develop and come into his own at his own time,” Keefe said. “They never push me to run him. They let me run him when he’s ready.”
Multiple stakes winner Alwaysmining, racing for the first time since last July, was sharp from the break and eager for the lead, going a quarter-mile in 24.13 seconds and a half in 47.10, with Galerio ranging up in the clear three wide to challenge. Tattooed, meanwhile, settled in mid-pack before getting untracked once straightened for home, weaving through traffic to find open space and get up late.
“He’s not a particularly easy horse to ride. Angel had ridden him earlier in his career,” Keefe said. “He’s got a quarter of a mile run, and that’s it. Running to the second wire going a mile, if you start too early he’s not going to finish. He did a great job doing that. He’s a game horse. The way Angel rode him, weaving in and out of traffic, he just kept on coming and got there at the end so we’re very fortunate.”
Galerio was second, two lengths ahead of multiple stakes winner Cordmaker, third in the historic Pimlico Special (G3) in 2019 and 2020. Hanalei’s Houdini, Hall Pass, My Friends Beer, Air Token, Oxide and defending champion Alwaysmining.
It was the fifth Jennings win for Keefe, who won four consecutive editions with Eighttofasttocatch (2011-14).
The Jennings is named for William Jennings Sr., one of Maryland’s all-time great horsemen. Jennings’ Glengar Farm, located six miles from Pimlico Race Course, came to national prominence in the late 1800s thanks to horses like 1887 Preakness winner Dunboyne. Jennings’ grandson is Hall of Fame trainer Henry S. Clark, honored with his own stakes in Maryland.
Gale Blows Away Rivals to Become Stakes Winner in $75,000 Geisha
Robert LaPenta, Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Bridledwood Farm’s Gale, back on her favorite track following a troubled graded and stakes debut in New York last fall, rolled to a front-running 2 ¾-length triumph in the $75,000 Geisha.
Though based in New York with trainer Jonathan Thomas, Gale ($3) made her first three starts at Laurel, the first two on turf, with wins on both grass and dirt before stepping up and stretching out in the 1 1/8-mile Comely (G3) Nov. 27. She was bumped and stumbled at the start, rushed up into contention and faded to be fifth.
Favored at 1-2, Gale broke a bit flat-footed in the Geisha but quickly got settled under jockey Sheldon Russell and worked her way to forge a short lead over multiple stakes winner Artful Splatter after a quarter-mile in 23.87 seconds. Gale began to separate from the field through splits of 46.43 and 1:12.11 and had plenty of room to hold off a late stretch bid from Kiss the Girls to win in 1:39.24 for one mile.
Kiss the Girls was 7 ¼ lengths ahead of Coconut Cake, making her stakes debut, in third. They were followed by S W Briar Rose, Artful Splatter and She’smysunshine.
A 4-year-old daughter of Belmont Stakes (G1) winner Tonalist, Gale fetched $450,000 as a 2-year-old in training in 2019. Unraced at 2, she graduated second time out in a 1 1/16-mile maiden claimer over Laurel’s world-class turf course last October and went gate-to-wire in a restricted one-mile allowance on the dirt – both over older horses – winning by a 20 combined lengths.
The Geisha honors Alfred G. Vanderbilt’s Maryland-bred mare, foaled at Sagamore Farm in 1943. Bred to Preakness winner Polynesian, she is best known for producing Native Dancer, one of the greatest racehorses and sires of the 20th century.
