HALLANDALE BEACH - At Gulfstream Park this morning, trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. was still trying to wrap his head around Chance It’s subpar performance in Saturday’s Tampa Bay Derby.

    Chance It, a multiple stakes-winner who had never been worse that second in six prior career starts, finished sixth at Tampa Bay Downs, 9 ½ lengths behind 49-1 upset winner King Guillermo.

   “It’s so easy to make different excuses,"Joseph said. "We haven’t come up with an idea yet. We’ll just go over him for the rest of the week and maybe around Sunday come up with a reason why he didn’t run better.” Joseph added that the son of Currency Swap has shown no physical evidence that would explain his subpar showing. “It could be many things. We don’t know at the moment.”

    Chance It rated off the pace between horses and advanced mildly on the turn into the stretch before flattening out in the stretch. “They were going slow that day, I don’t know why he was that far back," Joseph said. "They ran 48 - I don’t think he’s run that slow in his life. It’s hard to say."

   Chance It was coming off an impressive victory in the Jan. 4 Mucho Macho Man.

   “We just have to let everything play out for a week and come up with a game plan,” Joseph said. “By the end of the week, we’ll go over him to see if anything starts to show up. If nothing shows up, then we’ll make plans – if we give him another race or just keep going one turn.”

Thursday’s Rainbow 6 Jackpot Pool Guaranteed at $1 Million - 

    The 20-cent Rainbow 6 will offer a guaranteed jackpot pool of $1 Million Thursday. The multi-race wager went unsolved for the ninth racing day in a row since being hit for a jackpot of $468,945 on Feb. 27. Multiple tickets with all six winners were each worth $584.30.

Who’s Hot: Leading jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. rode four winners on today’s program, connecting with Alaskan ($4) in Race 1, Thenorthremembers ($5.20) in Race 5, Gemo ($5) in Race 9, and Aerodynamic ($3) in Race 10.

    Emisael Jaramillo rode back-to-back winners, scoring aboard Southern Toddy ($17.60) in Race 6 and Solar ($9.20) in Race 7. comments powered by Disqus