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Delosvientos targets repeat Brooklyn victory

Posted: Monday, June 01, 2009 6:15 PM

DELOSVIENTOS

Bill Denver/Equi-Photo

by Pete Denk

Delosvientos will attempt to become the first horse since Waquoit to win back-to-back editions of the Brooklyn Handicap (G2) on Friday at Belmont Park.

The $200,000 race drew a field of ten, including the Darley stable coupled entry of Ea and Barrier Reef.

Delosvientos has a record of four wins from five starts at the Brooklyn’s distance of 1½ miles. The six-year-old Siphon (Brz) gelding also has two wins from three starts at Belmont.

Giuseppe Iadisernia trains and owns Delosvientos, who enters off a disappointing fifth-place finish, beaten by 38¼ lengths, in the $65,000 Nasty and Bold Stakes at Belmont on May 7. The Nasty and Bold was contested on a sloppy track and was Delosvientos’s first start since December 31.

Joseph Iadisernia Jr., Giuseppe Iadisernia’s son and assistant, said he thinks Delosvientos needed his last race.

“I think the layoff was more the reason he ran like he did,” he said. “But he is doing real well right now, and he’s been at Belmont for about a week. Hopefully, he’ll run as big a race as he did last year.”

Delosvientos, who has set the pace in six of his previous seven starts, led at every call in last year’s Brooklyn and finished two lengths clear of runner-up Evening Attire (video). A winner of eight of 15 career starts, Delosvientos has earned $363,817, tops in the Brooklyn field. He will spot his nine challengers from two to six pounds.

Four Roses Thoroughbreds’ Rising Moon is one of two other Brooklyn entrants with a win at the distance. He won the 1 1/2-mile Wagon Limit Stakes in May 2007.

A six-year-old Runaway Groom horse trained by Richard Dutrow Jr., Rising Moon is lightly raced with four wins from nine starts. He will be making his second start of 2009.

Also entering the Brooklyn fresh is Edward P. Evans’s Nite Light, who has five wins and four seconds from 11 career starts, including stakes victories at 1 ½ miles and 1 5/8 miles. The five-year-old Thunder Gulch horse finished fifth in last year’s Brooklyn.

Also on Friday at Belmont, the $100,000 Hill Prince Stakes (G3), a one-mile turf race for three-year-olds, drew nine contenders.

Alain and Gerard Wertheimer’s Affirmatif has won two of three career starts, including the Woodlawn Stakes on the BlackBerry Preakness Stakes (G1) undercard on May 16 (video), is the probable favorite along with the Phipps Stable’s homebred Conservative.

Conservative earned his first career win on the Gulfstream Park turf course on February 8 and most recently finished second to Advice in the $300,000 Coolmore Lexington Stakes (G2) at Keeneland Race Course on the Polytrack surface (video).

Dogwood Stable’s Lime Rickey finished second in three turf stakes at Gulfstream Park, including a runner-up finish to Hill Prince entrant Duke of Homberg (GB) in the Hallandale Beach Stakes on February 14 (video).

Pete Denk is sales editor for Thoroughbred Times