Special Envoy and Rose Brier, both Virginia-bred horses, will compete in Saturday’s (tomorrow’s) $75,000 Henry Clark Stakes at Laurel. The former was last year’s third place finisher in the Clark while the latter has won two straight races including the 2015 Bert Allen Stakes. A field of 11 will compete one mile on the turf and will go to post at 5:53 PM. It will be race 10 on the card.
Rose Brier is shown here winning the 2014 Bert Allen Stakes. Photo by Jim McCue.
Special Envoy is 8-1 early, and is fresh off an allowance optional claiming victory at Tampa last time out on March 11th. The 5 year old gelding was bred by Mr. & Mrs. Bertram Firestone and is by Stroll out of Diplomacy by Cozzene. The Arnaud Delacour trainee has 12 “in the money” finishes from 15 career starts and has earned $143,890. Jockey Daniel Centeno will ride Saturday.
Rose Brier is 4-1 early and also is fresh off a win in Florida — a starter optional claiming event at Gulfstream. Bred by William Backer, the 7 year old son of Mizzen Mast captured both the ’14 and ’15 Allen Stakes at Laurel and has bankrolled $331,726 from 30 career outings. Trevor McCarthy will be in the irons for trainer Jane Cibelli and the Panic Stable, LLC. Rose brier is out of the El Gran Senor mare, Mexicali Rose.
On Sunday, another Virginia-bred will compete in the $100,000 Memories Of Silver Stakes at Aqueduct. Invite, conditioned by Bill Mott, will be making just her fifth lifetime start in the 1 1/16th miles turf test against 8 other challengers. The 3 year old daughter of Include won a maiden special weight clash at Belmont October 29th and was sixth in the Grade 2 Demoiselle Stakes at Aqueduct in late November. Bred by the Morgan’s Ford Farm, Invite is out of the Tobasco Cat mare, Cat Alert. Junior Alvarado will ride on Saturday for the Gainesway Stable. The stakes race is the 8th at Aqueduct and will go to post at 5:11 PM.
Virginia residents can bet the weekend action on line via TVG, XPressBet and Twin Spires.