Gio Ponti will look to find the way to the winner’s circle yet again while defending his title in the Shadwell Turf Mile
The 6-year-old Christophe Clement trained, Gio Ponti returns to her favourite places, the starting gate at Keeneland and the last time he was there, Gio Ponti won the Grade 1 Shadwell Turf Mile.
After five starts and just over a year, the son of Tale of the Cat returns to defend his title in the Grade 1 $600,000 Shadwell Turf Mile at Keeneland where he last found the winning circle.
The 2011 season hasn’t been too kind on Gio Ponti as he has failed to win a single race out of 4 starts, but managed to finish on the board regularly.
However, no one can dispute the class and desire of a runner who knocked out nearly 5.7 million in earnings, but there is still the question in the air, that is Gio Ponti as good as he once as before?
Christophe Clement has no questions on his mind about his classy runner, he still thinks he is as solid as he was before and he calls the winless streak a lack of racing luck and to be honest with Gio Ponti, he still runs the same kind of numbers as he always
does.
At the moment all seems irrelevant as Castleton Lyons owned horse prepares to bring down rivals in the richest race on the Keeneland’s fall meet card.
Back in 2010, Gio Ponti was extremely impressive when he won the 2010 edition of the Shadwell Turf Mile. Under Ramon Dominguez, Gio Ponti was held off the pace for most of the journey before unleashing a rampant run in the stretch.
Since then Gio Ponti has competed at the highest possible levels, and ran into extremely talented runners like Goldikova and Cape Blanco, but even there he was second best to them, keeping that consistency going.
In the 2011 Shadwell Mile Turf, Gio Ponti will break from post number 5 under regular rider Ramon Dominguez, as Shadwell reels in a total of eight runners with the likes of millionaires Get Stormy and Sidney’s Candy to contend with
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