Hallandale Beach, FL (SportsNetwork.com) – Defending race winner Lea will take on nine challengers as the 6-year-old goes for a second straight victory in Saturday’s $500,000 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park.<\/p>\n
Trained by Bill Mott and ridden by Joel Rosario, Lea defeated Will Take Charge in last year’s Donn and set a track record in what proved to be his last start of 2014. Lea stopped the timer at 1:46.86 to set a new track record for 1 1\/8 miles.<\/p>\n
For Saturday, Lea is the 9-5 morning line favorite and will start from post 4 in the 10-horse field with Rosario again riding<\/p>\n
Owned by Claiborne Farm and Adele Dilschneider, Lea has already duplicated last year’s start by winning a second straight Hal’s Hope Stakes at Gulfstream. The 6-year-old was the even-money favorite for the mile race with just five in the field.<\/p>\n
“I’d say, he’s probably coming into the Donn the same as he was last year,” Mott said. “He’s coming off a good race and I’m happy with him. He’s good enough to be in the race, but I can’t predict the outcome.”<\/p>\n
The Hal’s Hope was his first start since being sidelined with an illness following a victory in the 2014 Donn Handicap. Lea is working on a three-race win streak and has career earnings of $802,618 with seven wins in 13 starts.<\/p>\n
“He had been sick. He had a virus and it was a case where he had done enough. He was a Grade 1 winner, and he could have gone to the breeding shed. They opted to give him this chance right here. I told them what the condition of the horse was and how he was doing,” Mott said. “They made the decision. I told them step by step on a daily and weekly basis the condition of the horse and where we were at with him. I guess I made it sound good enough to keep him in training.”<\/p>\n
Here is the field for the 60th Donn in post position order: Constitution, Javier Castellano, 7-2; Commissioner, John Velazquez, 4-1; East Hall, Luis Saez, 15-1; Lea, Joel Rosario, 9-5; Elnaawi, Julien Leparoux, 15-1; Catholic Cowboy, Paco Lopez, 20-1; Sloane Avenue, Jose Lezcano, 15-1; Protonico, Joe Bravo, 6-1; Blue Tone, Corey Lanerie, 15-1 and Prayer for Relief, Edgard Zayas, 12-1.<\/p>\n
The Donn will be broadcast live on FOX Sports 1 with an approximate post time of 5:58 p.m. ET.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Hallandale Beach, FL (SportsNetwork.com) – Defending race winner Lea will take on nine challengers as the 6-year-old goes for a second straight victory in Saturday’s $500,000 Donn Handicap at Gulfstream Park. Trained by Bill Mott and ridden by Joel Rosario, Lea defeated Will Take Charge in last year’s Donn and set a track record in […]<\/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-29312","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29312","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=29312"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29312\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29312"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29312"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29312"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}