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Drum Roll Please, Comparative give Cox sweep of Saturday stakes at Aqueduct

by NYRA Press Office

• Drum Roll Please, Comparative give Cox sweep of Saturday stakes at Aqueduct
• Fluid Situation back to dirt in Friday optional claimer at the Big A
• Princess Mayfair hopes to be crowned victorious in $100K Busanda
• Aqueduct Racetrack winter meet Week 2 stakes probables

Trainer Brad Cox celebrated a successful day at Aqueduct Racetrack Saturday when sending out Gold Square’s Drum Roll Please to win the $150,000 Jerome and Godolphin’s Kentucky homebred Comparative to take the $150,000 Ladies five races later. The former was awarded an 80 Beyer Speed Figure for his 3 3/4-length score while the latter received a career-best 89 with a determined neck victory.

“They both came back really good and ate up great yesterday,” said Dustin Dugas, Cox’s Belmont Park-based assistant. “The track was slow and I was waiting to see how tired they would come back, but they were both bouncing around in the shed row this morning and are as good as you’d want them to come back.”

Drum Roll Please, a chestnut son of Hard Spun, scored his first stakes victory with an off-the-pace trip under Hall of Famer Javier Castellano in the one-mile route for sophomores, which awarded to top-five finishers 10-5-3-2-1 qualifying points towards the Grade 1 Kentucky Derby in May at Churchill Downs. Drum Roll Please tracked in fifth in the early stages before angling out six-wide in the turn for his run at pacesetter El Grande O. He put in a sustained run down the center of the course to pass his foe near the eighth pole and roll home to a comfortable score in a final time of 1:41.91.

The effort came on the heels of a game third-place finish in the nine-furlong Grade 2 Remsen in December at the Big A where Castellano guided the talented colt through a similar trip and made up ground late to land 4 3/4 lengths back of the top pair of Dornoch and Sierra Leone.

Dugas praised the ride from Castellano, who also rode Drum Roll Please to this third-out maiden score in October at the Big A.

“He’s lightly raced and the experience he gained yesterday was the main thing,” said Dugas. “After Javier won on him, he was really excited about him and even after the Remsen, he said he would make the trip to ride him again. He really fits the horse well.”

Dugas added Drum Roll Please will continue training in New York and will likely target a return to two turns in the nine-furlong Grade 3, $250,000 Withers on February 3 at the Big A which offers 20-10-6-4-2 Kentucky Derby qualifying points.

“The way he trains, it seems like he’s the type who can go all day,” said Dugas. “He’s a chunk and he’s a fun horse. He’s always been spunky in the mornings.”

Comparative also scored her first stakes victory with a pace-pressing trip under Manny Franco in the nine-furlong Ladies. The daughter of Street Sense tracked close to the pace set by She’s Mo Bubbly and was passed in the final turn by Saddle Up Jessie while Franco began a strong hand ride into the stretch. Saddle Up Jessie appeared to have superior momentum on the outside as Franco was all out aboard his charge down the lane, but Comparative dug in late to take the lead just before the wire and score by a neck in a final time of 1:55.83.

The win came on the heels of a successful return from a six-month respite in November when Franco guided the bay to a similar hard-fought victory in a local optional claimer.

Dugas said that Comparative finds her best stride thanks to Franco’s strength.

“Manny fits her so well, and he’s such a strong rider,” said Dugas. “She needs that. She’s a very nice filly, but she needs a strong, special rider. You always heard everyone talk on the backstretch about how strong Manny is, but I think everyone is noticing now. He’s shining.”

Comparative, a full-sister to the Cox-trained dual graded stakes-winner Shared Sense, has now won four of her last five starts, including a sixth-out maiden victory in February and an additional optional claiming triumph in April at Fair Grounds.

“I like her a lot and she’s such a cool filly,” said Dugas. “She’s happy to train and loves to do it. I’m not sure where she’ll go next. Brad will talk with Godolphin and review it with them and go from there.”

Comparative banked $82,500 for her Ladies victory and now boasts total purse earnings of $275,995 through a consistent record of 10-4-0-3.

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Fluid Situation back to dirt in Friday optional claimer at the Big A

Curragh Stables’ graded stakes-placed Fluid Situation will make both his return to the races and to the main track in Friday’s featured Race 7, a 6 1/2-furlong third-level optional claiming tilt, at Aqueduct Racetrack.

Trained by John Terranova, the son of Warrior’s Reward has not raced since a narrow victory in an October optional claimer at Belmont at the Big A where he sported blinkers for the first time and led at each point of call before fending off the bid of Legends Can’t Die to win by a nose. He completed the six furlongs in a final time of 1:08.73.

“It was first-time blinkers, so that kind of got him real focused,” said Terranova. “Ever since then, he’s been really in the zone. Let’s hope this surface suits him on Friday.

“We just didn’t know where we were going and we wanted to find this type of race down south, but nothing was really written,” Terranova added about the nearly two-month gap in starts. “We won the ‘2X’ twice, so this is just how it worked out.”

Friday’s race will mark the 5-year-old’s first start over dirt since finishing a prominent third in a seven-furlong optional claimer in December 2022 at Tampa Bay Downs. He graduated at third asking on the dirt in a seven-furlong maiden in March of that year at Tampa ahead of a distant third-place finish in the one-mile Grade 3 Dwyer two starts later at Belmont Park.

Terranova said he is pleased with Fluid Situation’s recent breezes, including a three-furlong move in 37.01 seconds yesterday over Belmont’s training track.

“Turf is his thing, but he’s a big, strong colt and is doing very well,” said Terranova. “We just figured this race is coming up and he’s doing so well – why don’t we try it again? He’s run some good races on the dirt and he does handle it, depending on how the track is. He likes a tighter track, so we’ll see. Everything is going really well.”

Terranova added Friday’s contest, which features a field that includes multiple graded stakes-placed entrants Factor It In and Nova Rags, could serve as a springboard to the five-furlong Turf Dash on February 17 at Tampa, a race he finished third in last year.

“He could end up down in the Turf Dash,” said Terranova. “We just wanted to keep him competitive.”

Fluid Situation, who boasts a 15-4-0-5 lifetime record, will emerge from post 5 in rein to five-pound apprentice Luis Rivera, Jr.

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Princess Mayfair hopes to be crowned victorious in $100K Busanda

JDLP Holdings' Princess Mayfair will look to make her stakes and New York debut a winning one in Saturday's $100,000 Busanda, a nine-furlong route for sophomore fillies, at Aqueduct Racetrack.

The Busanda is the first Kentucky Oaks prep race of the year in New York, and offers the top-five finishers 20-10-6-4-2 qualifying points, respectively, towards the prestigious Grade 1 test on the first Friday in May at Churchill Downs.

Trained by Steven Chircop, the Kentucky-bred Princess Mayfair boasts a record of 3-1-1-0 over the Woodbine Racetrack synthetic having made a rapid ascent from a second-out graduation sprinting 5 1/2-furlongs on December 2 to a strong second last out on December 16 traveling a two-turn 1 1/16-miles.

Chircop, who is based at Woodbine and has 23 stalls this winter at Penn National, said the West Coast dark bay endured a troubled start to her race career.

"She's been a very difficult horse to train early on in her career. She had a lot of antics," Chircop said. "One day, she flipped over, got loose and fell on the road and fractured an eye socket. We had to send her to the University of Guelph clinic and while she was there she got pneumonia from another horse. She was on target to run early and we had a lot of setbacks."

Chircop patiently developed the promising Princess Mayfair, a $50,000 purchase at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic 2-Year-Olds in Training Sale, breezing her 10 times over the Woodbine Tapeta ahead of her debut. The well-bred dark bay is out of the winning Speightstown mare Toast of Mayfair, who is a half-sister to 2017 Grade 1 Belmont Stakes-winner Tapwrit and multiple graded stakes-winner Ride a Comet.

"We got her on course and started working her back slowly. She showed a lot of potential," Chircop said.

Chircop enlisted Champion jockey Emma-Jayne Wilson to help prepare Princess Mayfair, but plans went awry when Wilson was injured in a spill on November 2 just nine days before a difficult debut when a distant ninth sprinting six-furlongs under Ryan Munger.

"She's a high-temperament horse and Emma spent a lot of time with the horse and seemed to bring her down a level," Chircop said. "We had to change riders which was the furthest thing from ideal on that horse. He worked her and she worked good and I expected big things from her first time out, but as it happened our pony that day was a white pony and she wanted no part of being anywhere near the pony.

"She ran away from the pony and almost went into the fence," continued Chircop. "They had to corral her behind the gate and then she threw the rider off. Everything that could have went wrong, went wrong. She broke from the gate and made a right-hand turn and was more focused on running away from horses as opposed to just running. She ran horrible based on our expectations."

Chircop regrouped with the filly, adding blinkers and earplugs along with a sharp gate work on November 26 that resulted in a narrow gate-to-wire maiden score despite jockey Jose Luis Campos losing his crop at the sixteenth pole.

"We did a lot more schooling with the pony - which she had always been fine with in the morning - and that second race she put it together," Chircop said.

Princess Mayfair exited her maiden win in good order and Chircop said he contemplated a number of options for her ahead of Woodbine's Closing Day on December 17, but first-level allowance races against her own kind at seven furlongs didn't fill.

Instead, he entered Princess Mayfair in a 1 1/16-mile route against the boys and she left the gate at odds of 19-1 with Campos up to set splits of 24.89 seconds, 50.82 and 1:15.26 under pressure from Competitive Touch. She opened by two lengths at the stretch call but was collared in the final 70 yards by Jayhawk, who had finished a good third one start prior in the Grade 3 Grey for Hall of Fame trainer Mark Casse.

"The third time she was completely different. She was much better," Chircop said. "She ran against the boys and she ran against a couple nice horses - the one that was pressing her on the lead [Competitive Touch] is a decent King's Plate prospect and she put that horse away and kicked on. She just got beat by a horse of Casse's that ran well in the Grey."

Chircop said the result confirmed the high hopes he has for Princess Mayfair.

"She went from 5 1/2-furlongs to a mile and a sixteenth in two and a half weeks, which would have never happened but for the timing of the year," Chircop said. "She reiterated everything we thought about her before she'd run."

Princess Mayfair breezed back a half-mile in 50.18 Friday over the Penn National dirt.

"All our works at Penn National are a bit slow but Julio Hernandez worked her and he was happy with her. She worked good enough that it's not a concern to run her," Chircop said. "We figured while her mind is good, we'd try to take advantage of some of these races."

Chircop, who won his only previous Big A start with Romantic Gamble in March, said he's confident Princess Mayfair can hold her own as she prepares to make her first dirt start.

"Until you run on the dirt you don't know, but she's bred up and down for it," Chircop said. "I'd feel better at a mile and a sixteenth but I think she fits well with those horses.

"She has the talent, no question," added Chircop. "It's all about keeping her brain together. Touch wood, the horse is changing night and day for the better at this point in time."

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Aqueduct Racetrack winter meet Week 2 stakes probables

Saturday, January 13

$100K Busanda – Offering 20-10-6-4-2 Kentucky Oaks qualifying points

Probable: Class Act (Todd Pletcher), Most of All (Bill Mott), Princess Mayfair (Steven Chircop), Shimmering Allure (Kenny McPeek)

Possible: Bernietakescharge (Domenick Schettino), Gin Gin (Brad Cox), My Mane Squeeze (Mike Maker)

Sunday, January 14

$100K Franklin Square (NYB)

Probable: Cara’s Time (Mitchell Friedman), Sweet Brown Sugar (Paul Barrow), Tricky Temper (Jeremiah Englehart)

Possible: Bernietakescharge (Schettino), Flight Control (Robert Klesaris), My Mane Squeeze (Maker), Soloshot (George Weaver), Unicorn Cake (Englehart)