Arcadia, CA (SportsNetwork.com) – Secret Circle and Seeking the Sherif have been made the overwhelming favorites versus five other sprinters in Saturday’s $100,000 Midnight Lute Stakes at 6 1\/2 furlongs at Santa Anita.<\/p>\n
Secret Circle, trained by Bob Baffert, is the 4-5 morning line favorite with Seeking the Sherif the 5-2 second choice for the Midnight Lute, formerly the Vernon O. Underwood Stakes at Hollywood Park.<\/p>\n
Martin Garcia once again has the riding assignment aboard Secret Circle with the pair starting from post 6. Seeking the Sherif will be ridden by Edwin Maldonado from post 5 in the seven-horse field.<\/p>\n
Secret Circle, owned by Karl Watson, Paul Weitman and Mike Pegram, failed to successfully defend his crown in November’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Santa Anita. The 5-year-old was second, a half-length behind Work All Week in the six-furlong championship.<\/p>\n
Four weeks ago, with Joel Rosario riding, Secret Circle was the 5-2 favorite in the Cigar Mile at Aqueduct, but again finished second, beaten five lengths by Private Zone.<\/p>\n
Secret Circle, winless in 2014, has three seconds and a third from four starts but has overall career earnings of $2,424,790 with seven wins, five seconds and a third from 13 starts.<\/p>\n
Trainer Ron Ellis will saddle Seeking the Sherif for the Midnight Lute and owners Tim Goodwin, Steven Zolotas and Sabina Romo-Zolotas.<\/p>\n
“He’s a hard-trying horse and he’s doing great. I just don’t know if he’s as good as Secret Circle,” Ellis indicated.<\/p>\n
Seeking the Sherif will be making his first start since finishing 11th in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint as a 43-1 longshot. However, the 5-year-old has won five of nine starts in 2014 for $222,700. He comes into Saturday’s race with seven wins in 12 lifetime starts for $244,100.<\/p>\n
“Breaking from the rail in the Breeders’ Cup was a tough thing to overcome but it was a tough race,” Ellis said. “The horse is probably not quite that good, but he doesn’t owe us anything after being claimed for $12,500.”<\/p>\n
Here is the complete field in post position order for the Midnight Lute: Heir of Storm, Gary Stevens, 15-1; Bahamian Squall, Corey Nakatani, 8-1; Bolita Boyz, Rafael Bejarano, 8-1; Appealing Tale, Victor Espinoza, 20-1; Seeking the Sherif, Edwin Maldonado, 5-2; Secret Circle, Martin Garcia, 4-5 and Distinctiv Passion, Mike Smith, 4-1.<\/p>\n
Post time for the Midnight Lute Stakes will be approximately 5:30 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arcadia, CA (SportsNetwork.com) – Secret Circle and Seeking the Sherif have been made the overwhelming favorites versus five other sprinters in Saturday’s $100,000 Midnight Lute Stakes at 6 1\/2 furlongs at Santa Anita. Secret Circle, trained by Bob Baffert, is the 4-5 morning line favorite with Seeking the Sherif the 5-2 second choice for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27726\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}