By Joe Quillen
Sunday 2/25/24 Santa Anita Race 9
We head to Santa Anita for Sunday’s Quills Picks Winners race for the ninth race on their 10 race card which is the Wishing Well Stakes for older fillies and mares going six and a half furlongs down the hill. The eleven horses entered will head up the hill to the gate at approximately 7:30 pm Eastern time.
Favored in the Wishing Well is the 2 Gracelund Gray (7/2 morning line) and she just missed in the Las Cienegas in a race where she shortened up from a Grade 1 mile race. She looks she will be close to the lead here, and if things go according to plan, she won’t be five or six wide as they cross over the main track to get back onto the turf for the stretch run. I do like her chances here.
The 10 School Dance (4/1 ML) returns for her first race since August, and milers returning to the hillside turf course at Santa Anita do well. She is a stalker type here and should be rolling late if she’s ready to run here today.
The 7 Ice Dancing (6/1 ML) is a bit intriguing to me. She’s coming back after two months when she did not do much against Grade 1 company on the dirt. Yes, it’s first-time turf. Yes, Frosted’s offspring are okay in turf sprints (11% winners; 28 for 251), but I am willing to throw her into the top four here because it looks like this is an interesting place to bring her back. Ice Dancing’s mother Welcome Dance is a stakes winner on the turf.
The 8 Carmen Miranda has run well twice on the hillside turf in her career and has run very well in her three turf races since she returned from a layoff in August. Also, the jockey change to Geovanni Franco could be sneaky advantageous while CM’s regular jockey Flavien Prat is returning to California from racing in Saudi Arabia yesterday. The Franco/Philip D’Amato jockey/trainer combination hits at 30% out of 33 races in 2023-24. Hopefully we can get the 12/1 morning line odds that are in the program here.
I’m going to go for an upset here. I’ll say that Carmen Miranda stalks and barely defeats Gracelund Gray here to win the Wishing Well. I’ll call this 8-3-7-10 and my play is $20 to win on the 8 Carmen Miranda. Good luck everyone and I’ll see you tomorrow with another Quills Picks Winners.
Follow Joe on Twitter/Instagram/Threads @JoeQuills. Check out the Bleacher Brothers Show from 8 to 10 pm Eastern Time on the Tony Bruno Sports Network app! Also check Joe’s sports stream podcast on Twitch every Tuesday and Thursday at 10 pm ET, and his YouTube channel where you can catch the show on demand.
