Trainer Baltas looking for another La Jolla win with Pioneer Lad
Trainer Richard Baltas will be aiming to annex the Grade III $150,000 La Jolla Handicap for the second year in a row when he sends out Pioneer Lad in the 77th running of the event on Sunday.
The 2016 La Jolla turned out to be a revelation for the betting public, if not necessarily for Baltas. Free Rose, a gelded son of Munnings, jumped in for the middle leg of the three-race turf stakes series for 3-year-olds and carried Joe Talamo wire-to-wire, returning $59.80 for a $2 win bet.
For good measure, Free Rose came back in the series-finale Grade II $250,000 Del Mar Derby on Sunday, September 4, the penultimate day of the meeting. This time he rated in second before opening a three-length lead at the top of the stretch under Norberto Arroyo, Jr., and held on for a half-length victory returning $25.80.
Two out of three in a series that started with the opening-day Oceanside Stakes wasn’t bad. In fact, it was good enough that Free Rose was voted the top 3-year-old of the meeting.
“I wanted to run Free Rose in the Oceanside, but he didn’t have enough earnings to make the field,” Baltas recalled Saturday morning. “So I ran him against older (third in an allowance seven days into the meeting) and then brought him back in the La Jolla.”
Pioneer Lad, a Kentucky-bred son of Pioneerof the Nile, did make the Oceanside and finished second, 1 ½-lengths behind Bowies Hero, at odds of 21-1. He has one win and in-the-money finishes in all five starts and earnings of $79,980 for Paymaster Racing LLC.
“I was pretty happy with his effort,” Baltas said of the Oceanside. “The whole thing is, he’s a 3-year-old colt that’s still developing. It was his first time on grass and I think he liked it. We’re hopeful, put it that way.”
The field from the rail: Fashion Business (Joe Talamo, 8-1), Colonist (Flavien Prat, 7-2), Placido (Rafael Bejarano, 6-1), Pioneer Lad (Tyler Baze, 6-1), Offshore (Evin Roman, 20-1), Caribou Club (Drayden Van Dyke, 12-1), Sharp Samurai (Gary Stevens, 5-2), Double Touch (Kent Desormeaux, 8-1) and Monster Man (Santiago Gonzalez, 9-2).
Source: Del Mar Thoroughbred Club