Kindle Gets Green Light for Monrovia
“Water’s wet, the sky is blue and Kindle has lots of speed.”
Each is a given, and that’s how Gary Mandella summed up the running style of Kindle, the 5-year-old mare he trains for next Sunday’s Grade II, $200,000 Monrovia Stakes for fillies and mares at about 6 ½ furlongs on Santa Anita’s unique downhill turf course.
“She’s doing really well,” Mandella said of the daughter of Indian Charlie, who shows two seconds in two starts on Santa Anita’s unusual venue, beaten a half a length each time, once by Broken Dreams in the Grade III Sen. Ken Maddy in October of 2012 and once by two-time Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint winner Mizdirection in the Monrovia a year ago. Each time Kindle held daylight leads into the stretch.
“She does have a lot of speed, but in a perfect world, I would love to think, as an older mare, she’d be able to sit off one or two (horses), because she did get nailed at the wire twice going down the hill,” Mandella said. “Her training to this point’s been very good.”
That would include a five furlong move on Hollywood Park’s Cushion Track Sunday morning in 1:00.80. “Very nice,” is how Mandella termed the drill. “We’re ready now.”
Probable for the Monrovia: Camryn Kate, Tyler Baze; Ciao Bella Luna, no rider; Kindle, Rafael Bejarano; Ponchatrain, Gary Stevens; Purim’s Dancer, Joe Talamo; and Sky High Gal, Corey Nakatani.
POSITION KEY ON DOWNHILL COURSE, DELAHOUSSAYE SAYS
Winning races on Santa Anita’s unique downhill turf course at about 6 ½ furlongs is no big secret. Take it from Eddie Delahoussaye, the retired Hall of Fame jockey who has won scores of races on the venue over which horses take a right-hand turn from the grass, then cross over a patch of dirt before returning to the grass turning into the homestretch.
The course will be showcased in Sunday’s Grade II Monrovia stakes for fillies and mares, a race Delahoussaye won twice, in 1985 on Lina Cavalieri for owners Mr. and Mrs. Jerry Moss and the late Bobby Frankel, and in 1998 aboard Madame Pandit for owner Janis Witham and trainer Ron McAnally.
“It’s just a matter of putting your horse in the right position when you’re making the right-hand turn,” said Delahoussaye, one of most popular riders of his generation and once and forever one of the most popular riders on the Southern California circuit.
“You could get pinned in pretty good making the right-hand turn. Some horses really love the course, and the ones that do, they just skip across the dirt when they come to it. Others will hesitate, then they’ll go over it, but the rider has to be prepared.”