Hallandale Beach, FL (SportsNetwork.com) – Ulanbator showed a lot of spunk in winning Saturday’s $50,000 allowance race over 2014 Belmont Stakes runner-up Commissioner at Gulfstream Park.<\/p>\n
Sent off as the 5-1 third pick, Ulanbator got the best of 3-5 favorite Commissioner in the 1 1\/16-mile allowance race. Trained by Ian Wilkes, Ulanbator and jockey Julien Leparoux stalked the pace being set by Secretive and Commissioner.<\/p>\n
Ulanbator, owned by Mary Ann Charlston, drew even with Commissioner in mid- stretch where the two bumped. Taking a short lead down the stretch was 30-1 longshot Looking Cool after trailing the field in the early going.<\/p>\n
Ulanbator split Looking Cool and Commissioner, also making his 2015 debut, nearing the wire and was able to post a head decision over Looking Cool with the favorite another neck back. Dawly, the 4-1 second choice, was fourth followed by Secretive, Tarpy’s Goal, Dudeman and Undertaker.<\/p>\n
“It was a real gutsy effort,” Wilkes said. “We were third at the quarter pole in between horses and probably a good half-length behind. He had to dig in from between horses and showed a little bit of grit today.”<\/p>\n
Ulanbator covered the 1 1\/16 miles in 1:42.75 on a fast track.<\/p>\n
The $500,000 Donn Handicap on February 7, the year’s first major race for older horses, is a possible next start for both Ulanbator and Commissioner.<\/p>\n
“I think he’s a horse that needs to find his rhythm,” Commissioner’s trainer Todd Pletcher noted. “It might have been a touch quicker than what we would have wanted, but he seemed to be doing it within himself. I thought he ran well.”<\/p>\n
The two new 4-year-olds will likely take on Lea in defense of last year’s Donn title. Lea, trained by Hall of Fame member Bill Mott, won Saturday’s Hal’s Hope Stakes at Gulfstream.<\/p>\n
“I guess there’s a month back to the Donn and we’ll just have to see,” Mott said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hallandale Beach, FL (SportsNetwork.com) – Ulanbator showed a lot of spunk in winning Saturday’s $50,000 allowance race over 2014 Belmont Stakes runner-up Commissioner at Gulfstream Park. Sent off as the 5-1 third pick, Ulanbator got the best of 3-5 favorite Commissioner in the 1 1\/16-mile allowance race. Trained by Ian Wilkes, Ulanbator and jockey Julien […]<\/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-28341","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28341","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=28341"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28341\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28343,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28341\/revisions\/28343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28341"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28341"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28341"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}