Comical, Amalfi Sunrise clash in Del Mar's Sorrento Stakes
A field of six was entered for Saturday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Sorrento Stakes, a six-furlong sprint for 2-year-old fillies that is the major prep for the Del Mar Debutante (G1) on Saturday, August 31.
The Sorrento will, as usual, feature fillies with only one or two lifetime starts but have displayed precocity in them.
Comical, a daughter of Into Mischief trained by Doug O’Neill, won her debut on May 26 at Santa Anita by six lengths then shipped to Saratoga for a score by a neck in the Schuylerville Stakes (G3) in the mud on July 11.
“She’s doing really well and I think she’s getting better all the time,” Leandro Mora, O’Neill’s top assistant, said Wednesday morning.
“We’re going to put the same equipment back on her that we had the first time, the shadow roll. We didn’t put the shadow roll on at Saratoga because it was pouring and the shadow roll absorbs too much weight.”
The full list of entrants in post position order (with jockeys in parentheses) are: Comical (Julien Leparoux),
Comical figures to take considerable money, while Amalfi Sunrise
"She was professional, broke well, drew away like a good filly and ran a good time," Callaghan later told Horse Racing Nation. “She’s a filly that we’ve always liked. We’re looking forward to the rest of the year with her.”
Callaghan won the 2018 Sorrento with Bellafina.
This year's renewal goes as the fifth of 10 races Saturday, with top runners exiting to face the Bob Baffert-trained Immediate Impact, a half-sister to Arroagate who aired it out Sunday on debut.