Longshot of the Day: Race 7 at Turfway Park
Track: Turfway Park
Race 7: Cincinnati Trophy going 1 mile on synthetic for 3YO fillies
Post Time: 8:55 PM ET
Horse: #13 Wondrous (12/1 morning line) use as a win bet at 8/1.
Tonight’s Cincinnati Trophy at Turfway Park serves as a 20-point Kentucky Oaks prep race and I like a runner that just drew into the field this morning after two early scratches were announced. Wondrous was my Longshot of the Day pick back on January 17 when she debuted going six furlongs at Turfway Park for trainer Brendan Walsh. She ended up taking some money but still paid $8.68 to win as she sat toward the rear of the field and then swallowed up the competition coming down the stretch to win going away. The reason I loved her in debut and the reason I still love her now is that she is regally bred for this type of race. She is the half-sibling to six-time GSW Maxfield as well as Grade 3 winner Loved. The combined record for those two horses is 13 wins in 22 starts. Not bad. Wondrous is sired by the late Uncle Mo who was consistently producing winners across all surfaces, but his offspring did particularly well routing on synthetic winning at an 18% clip compared to the 14% all-sire average. She is bred to go longer and has bloodlines to suggest the moment will not be too big for her. Jockey Luan Machado stays aboard and I expect her to have significantly better early speed now that she is going two turns in addition to Machado wanting to save some ground from the far outside post. Walsh has been giving her some nice works leading up to her stakes debut as she is coming off a pair of five-furlong conditioning drills in the morning. She will have to move forward from her maiden victory while switching off Lasix, but there are a couple of other horses who also must deal with the Lasix question as well as the fact your morning line favorite is also a last-out maiden winner. When you look at the totality of the field, Wondrous fits in this spot and Walsh is not the type of rush a horse, even for an ownership group like Godolphin. Her debut was impressive enough to warrant consideration in this race at a significant morning line price. It will be interesting to see how betting impacts her odds as there is a cutoff point for her as I would not want to take much lower than 8/1 and would be opposed to betting her below 6/1.