Summer Front on the Road Again
If Summer Front had a business card it would likely read: “Have Ability, Will Travel.”
When Summer Front, the 8-5 morning line favorite for Sunday’s Grade I, $300,000 Eddie Read Stakes, departs the gate the 5-year-old son of War Front will be running for the eighth time in the past 11 months and on a seventh different track. All against graded stakes competition.
Owned by Waterford Stable and trained by Christophe Clement, Summer Front has two wins and three second-place finishes to show for those seven starts which have come in the states of New Jersey, Kentucky, California, Florida and New York. Most recently, Summer Front shipped from Clement’s headquarters in New York to Santa Anita for a runner-up finish to Obviously in the Shoemaker Mile on June 14, went back to New York to train and then journeyed back to California, arriving at Del Mar on Wednesday.
“When a horse ships as well as this one it’s no problem,” said Lee Vickers, assistant to Clement and Summer Front’s travelling companion. “He jogged Thursday and galloped the next two days. He trained well back in New York, he’s moving well and we’re very pleased with how he’s doing.”
Summer Front has eight wins in 19 career starts and earnings of $814, 140. A victory in the Read, the first of seven Grade I stakes during the summer meeting, would be the first at that level for Summer Front and the $180,000 first place money in the 1 1/8-mile turf event would put Summer Front on the doorstep of millionaire status.
“The extra distance over the Shoemaker could help and there’s no Obviously this time,” Vickers said. “We hope there’ll be a bit of pace for him to run at.”
Clement sent out Discreet Marq to win the 2013 Del Mar Oaks. Joe Bravo was scheduled to travel to Del Mar overnight after riding Saturday at Woodbine in Toronto.
The Read will go as the fifth on an 11-race card and will be telecast nationally as part of the Jockey Club Tour on FOX. Also featured on the two-hour FOX Sports 1 telecast (2:30-4:30 p.m. Pacific) will be the Coaching Club American Oaks from Saratoga. On-air duties will be handled by Greg Wolf, Richard Migliore, Andy Serling, and Alyssa Ali at Saratoga and Simon Bray at Del Mar.