Royal Palm Juvenile & Juvenile Fillies Picks

The Royal Palm Juvenile and Royal Palm Juvenile Fillies are typically launching pads for two-year-old American turf horses to make their way to Royal Ascot to compete in one of the most prestigious meets in the world. The fields for this year’s races taking place Saturday at Gulfstream Park came up strong and NYRA Bets handicapper Matthew DeSantis gives you picks and analysis below.

I love this race as you have some big pedigrees and some other horses that might have more modest backgrounds but have already shown talent on the track. Your likely favorite, and rightfully so, is #6 Lennilu (6/1) who won in debut at Keeneland in the first juvenile race of the season. There is plenty of reasons to love her in this spot as she has the experience of having raced and won while showing the ability to come from off the pace, which is a rare trait to see in those early juvenile races that are often won in gate-to-wire fashion. She also has fantastic turf sprint pedigree as her sire, Leinster, became a multiple time GSW turf sprint once he switched to the grass. Trainer Patrick Biancone is always good with his young horses and this one has Luis Saez up for the mount, so you know they mean business. A horse with big pedigree is #5 Nonna’s Love (7/2) who is the half-sibling to 2023 Champion 2-Year-Old Male Fierceness as well as Mentee who won the Futurity (G3) the first time on the turf. Nonna’s Love is sired by Caravaggio who is a tremendous turf influence, and she also has the fortune of having a race under her belt from the Keeneland meet where she finished third. Despite not winning, I thought it was an educational debut and one where she put away the speed she was chasing but was overtaken by horses coming from off the very fast early pace. Trainer Todd Pletcher does not typically put young horses in these type of early season spots, so he clearly sees a lot of talent in her. The horse with the biggest price tag is #2 Bibi Dahl (9/2) who sold for $1.35 million at the Keeneland September Yearling Sale last year. The daughter of Triple Crown winner American Pharoah is the full sibling to Forbidden Kingdom who was precocious early as he won his debut and two Kentucky Derby prep races in California. Later in his career he also won a Grade 2 turf sprint, so there is plenty of reason to suspect this one could fire early on the grass. Trainer Jorge Delgado hasn’t gotten this one out on the grass yet in the mornings, but she has had strong gate works that show early speed and the trainer wins at a 22% clip in two-year-old debuts. Finally, #8 Emerald Ember (15/1) is a little interesting to me as the other Patrick Biancone entry. She only has three registered workouts, but two of them came on turf and they were both impressive. Biancone worked her twice at the distance of four furlongs, which is not always common for these young juveniles as many of them stick to three furlong works. Both of those turf works were solid as she went 47.2 seconds in one of them and 48.1 seconds in another. She followed that up with a strong three-furlong gate work in 35.3 seconds that was third of 19. She is another Leinster baby, so the turf pedigree is there and it’s worth nothing that while Leinster only stands for $2,500 in Florida, this one sold for $75,000, which is more than three times the sale price of her stablemate Lennilu, and we already saw what that one can do.