If this game were meant to be easy, handicappers would automatically concede today’s Monroe Stakes to favorite Grand Ave Girl (6-5).
Her pace figures have her loose on the lead and she’s clearly fastest on the Thoro Graph scale. Then what fun would that be? Instead, we’re going with a rice shot with wakeup potential: Key Biscayne (12-1).
In clever hands, she will be ready for anything, including a surface switch to Tapeta is that becomes necessary.
She has been racing off form on paper, but she has been facing better consistently. She remains in stakes company but today’s conditions are more favorable, a kind of hidden class drop.
The last time she sound the winners’ circle was in the barn of Juan Alvarado, the case here. In her last two starts she was the victims of no-chance wide trips. See her last. Nearly impossible to win on GP course racing very wide on both turns: Gulfstream Park, MAR 22, Race 8.
Freshened seven weeks, today’s placement shows signs of confidence from the barn. At fair odds, we will test this theory.
Taking Key Biscayne to win at 10-1 or greater and an exacta box with the favorite.
