Hal's Hope Entrant Valid Shows No Signs of Slowing Down

Entering his 6-year-old season in 2016, multiple graded stakes winner Valid shows no signs of slowing down. The dark bay or brown gelding will make his 34th career start in Saturday’s $150,000 Hal’s Hope (G3) at Gulfstream Park.

It will be the 27th start for Valid since joining the barn of trainer Marcus Vitali in the fall of 2013. During their time together, the son of Medaglia d’Oro has 10 wins, seven seconds and four thirds with five stakes victories: the Monmouth Cup (G2) in 2014 and the Fred Hooper (G3), Iselin (G3), Groomstick and Harlan’s Holiday last year.

“What can I say about Valid? Valid really talks for himself,” Vitali said. “He’s doing well, he’s strong, he’s holding up, he’s acting the same as always, eating good, training good. He’s a little difficult in the morning, which tells me he’s OK.  He’s doing his thing.”

Based at Palm Meadows, Gulfstream Park’s satellite training facility in Palm Beach County, Vitali has been able to fine-tune Valid’s performances in the afternoon by carefully managing his morning preparations.

“He’s got his quirks. If he feels like going, he goes; if he doesn’t, he doesn’t,” Vitali said. “He’s a horse you have to train by the minute, not by the day. There’s always a Plan A, B and C with him, but he’s a good horse. He does everything right, whatever he decides to do at the time. We adapt, and he seems to be liking it.”

Purchased for $500,000 as a yearling in the fall of 2011, Valid won one of his first seven starts before being purchased by Carolyn Vogel of Crossed Sabres Farm for $115,000 out of Fasig-Tipton’s Saratoga fall mixed sale in November 2013. His career bankroll currently stands at $833,577.

Valid has finished in the top three 24 times in 33 starts and has been worse than third only once in his last eight races when fifth from post 10 in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile (G1) Oct. 30 at Keeneland. Three of the four horses that finished ahead of him – Liam’s Map, Lea and Wicked Strong – are Grade 1 winners.

“He didn’t run bad in the Breeders’ Cup at all. I think the post position crushed him. I think we would have been third in the race, no worse than fourth, if we had a better post. It was the luck of the draw. [Jockey] Nik [Juarez] said he never could get him inside,” Vitali said.

“He came back and it didn’t take a lot out of him, honestly. I gave him a week off and he started acting silly and maybe he didn’t need the week off. He doesn’t miss a beat. If you look at him he’s just big and strong and he looks like a monster. He’s really flourishing right now.”

Melnyk Racing Stables’ Lukes Alley, first or second in his last eight races and 10 of 12 lifetime starts, will try turf again for the first time in 27 months in Saturday’s $200,000 Fort Lauderdale (G2).

A multiple graded stakes winner trained by Josie Carroll, Lukes Alley broke his maiden on the grass at Woodbine in the summer of 2013 and finished sixth over a soft course in the Hawthorne Derby (G3) two months later where the winner, Kid Dreams, ran 1 1/8 miles in 2:01.49.

"I think you have to throw out the race at Hawthorne,” Carroll said. “If you look at the time on it, it was crazy slow. It was really just a bog that day and he didn’t handle it a little bit. I just completely throw that race out for any horse that ran in it.”

A son of Grade 1 winner Flower Alley, Lukes Alley bounced back to win an off-the-turf event over elders 21 days later to cap his sophomore year and has been no worse than second since including victories in the Durham Cup (G3) and Autumn Stakes (G2) in back-to-back starts in the fall of 2014.

Lukes Alley ran just three times in 2015, all on Woodbine’s all-weather surface, not getting started until winning a 1 1/16-mile allowance in September. He was second in defense of each his graded stakes wins, including a half-length loss in the Nov. 8 Autumn despite a career-high Beyer Speed Figure of 101.

Carroll shipped Lukes Alley to her winter base at Palm Meadows, Gulfstream’s satellite training facility in Palm Beach County, where he has had five works over the turf course for the 1 1/16-mile Fort Lauderdale. He will break from post four under Paco Lopez at 119 pounds.

“After his last race we came down to Florida and got climatized and were just waiting for a spot to run. He’s been training very well since he got here. He’s been getting over the turf very nicely, so we thought we’d give him an opportunity to run on it here,” Carroll said.