Azpurua ready to take a chance with Ravelo’s Boy in the Belmont Stakes
Trainer Manuel Azpurua brought Korina stable owned 3-year-old colt, Ravelo’s Boy, to participate in the Grade 1, $1 million Belmont Stakes at Belmont Park on 9 June, 2012.
The draws on 6 June, 2012, tagged Ravelo’s Boy as the 50 to 1 longshot – fair enough, because the Lawyer Ron colt hasn’t really showed that he can be a threat going into the Belmont Stakes, after some below par performances when he joined stakes-company.
Azpurua brought Ravelo’s Boy from Florida to New York, and when asked what the point is, the 83-year-old trainer replied.
“You have to try, my friend,” he said.
After the draw, the very next day out from his designated “stakes barn” Ravelo’s Boy went out for a feel of the Big Sandy, where he will run the longest and toughest race thus far. The colt started off with a jog on the track, and then turned it up with
a gallop over the 1 ½ mile dirt track under exercise rider Enrique Barcenas.
Out of mare Dance Tune by French Deputy, Ravelo’s Boy has his entire career run at Florida based racetracks. Starting his career from Calder Race Course, he raced eight times there and then made a switch to Gulfstream Park, where he landed an allowance/optional
claimer at 1 1/16 miles to end his juvenile season.
Ravelo’s Boy started as a sophomore at Gulfstream Park, and with a step-up in class the clot measured the Gulfstream Park Derby, but fell way short to finish fifth to winner, Reveron.
It was Tampa Bay Downs for Ravelo’s Boy, where he finished fourth in the Grade 3 Sam F. Davis Stakes at about 1 1/16 miles, and over the same distance in the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby where he finished fifth.
“I don’t like to take a chance if I don’t have some kind of good feeling,” Azpurua said. “I’m feeling that way. I bring horses that sometimes they say, ‘That trainer is crazy.’ But every time I come to the big races, I’ll be there.”
Ravelo’s Boy in the Belmont Stakes – will be running outside of Florida for the first time.
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