Wesley Ward is back on the Royal Ascot trail at Gulfstream Park on Saturday [May 10] when he saddles two-year-olds in a pair of qualifying events for the British summer showpiece.
Hat Creek Racing’s Satisfied Mind, a popular and decisive winner of her unveiling last month at Keeneland, steps into stakes company with a trip to the royal meeting on the line in the $100,000 Royal Palm Juvenile Fillies.
George Weaver-trained Crimson Advocate won the $100,000 contest two years ago before following up in the G2 Queen Mary at Royal Ascot.
The Royal Palm Juvenile Fillies co-headlines a 10-race program with the $100,000 Royal Palm Juvenile, both scheduled for five furlongs on the grass. Each race winner earns an automatic berth in one of six juvenile contests at Royal Ascot meeting in June, plus a $25,000 travel stipend.
Ward (right) has won 12 races at Royal Ascot – and he hopes Satisfied Mind proves to be his next. The bay daughter of First Samurai debuted with a front-running 3¼-length maiden special weight triumph going 4½ furlongs on April 16 over Keeneland’s main track.
“She’s a talented filly,” said the trainer. “She won off only a few works. From what I saw from her I didn’t want to just keep breezing her because she was so quick I didn’t want to get a shin or something that would knock me out.
“She kind of got a little sick prior to the race,” Ward added. “What was impressive was that she did what she did off only four lifetime workouts.”
Satisfied Mind began breezing in late February on the all-weather surface at Turfway Park before moving to Keeneland, where she has worked once following her win, a half mile move in 49.80 seconds over a wet-fast track April 30.
“She should move forward for having had that race in not only fitness, but seasoning underneath her,” Ward said. “The day she ran it was kind of a really deep, dry, sandy track. It wasn’t like a rainy track where they can get through it and get over it really good, so that was something else that impressed me.”
Emisael Jaramillo will ride Satisfied Mind from Post 4 in an overflow field of 14 that includes also-eligibles Just A Little Bit and Divinely Inspired. Jaramillo will likely get the same instructions given to Hall of Famer Joel Rosario, aboard for her debut.
“She is ultra-quick. I told that to Joel going into the race that the first few jumps she’s lightning, lightning fast, so he had a hold of her. She would have shown a lot more speed than she did, even,” Ward said. “I would only assume with that start underneath her that she’ll be in front. As fast as she is, she will definitely be in front.”
Ward isn’t worried about moving to turf for the Royal Palm Juvenile Fillies. Satisfied Mind is one of only four horses in the race with a prior start, all of them on dirt.
“I always thought she was going to be a grass filly,” he explained. “This race was always in mind from the onset for her second start. Gatewood Bell, who owns Hat Creek, he buys these horses for me hoping to go to Royal Ascot. That would be great. There’s nothing like it.”
Ward became the first American trainer to win at Royal Ascot in 2009 but has drawn a blank since Campanelle won the 2021 Commonwealth Cup on the demotion of Dragon Symbol.
Famously, much of his success there has come with two-year-olds. “Their training style from when I first started going until now leading into these juvenile races has completely changed,” he observed.
“The Europeans, they would always want to take their horses back and make one big surge, and that’s one of the reasons I went over there,” he went on.
“They’ve kind of turned it around now. It’s tough to win these things over there, I’ll tell you that. When I got lucky right off the bat they said, ‘Well, we better not let that American boy get out there where we can’t catch him.’ They’re right on my heels now.”
Ward also has gelding Fuzzy Stare entered in the Royal Palm Juvenile. “It should be a good race for both horses,” he said. “I’d say the filly should be shooting out of there and going, she’s extremely quick. [Fuzzy Stare], he can be a little tactical, I’d say.”
Trainer Patrick Biancone entered the pair of Lennilu and Emerald Ember. Amy Dunne, Caitlin Dunne and Brenda Miley’s Lennilu is also coming off a debut win at Keeneland, getting up over a sloppy and sealed track April 6 to win by a length going 4½ furlongs. The runner-up, Kadabra, came back to graduate May 3 at Aqueduct.
“She was working very well and I was very excited to take a shot over there because she was ready very early. We didn’t want to wait too much. We went there and she won very nice,” Biancone said. “We were very happy with her performance. The idea was to run there and if everything goes right we would follow the program.
“She’s a very talented and very fast filly,” he added. “She ran a very good race that day and she came back good. We learned that she’s a very good traveler, too, because she handled it very well. All was perfect.”
Luis Saez, up at Keeneland, is named to ride back from Post 6.
Biancone had yet to decide whether Dew Sweepers’ Emerald Ember would run. Also by multiple graded-stakes winning turf sprinter Leinster, she has three timed works at Palm Meadows, Gulfstream’s satellite training facility in Palm Beach County.
“She’s a promising filly,” he said. “It’s not a question of quality but she’s not the fastest out of the gate and I need to gate her one more time to see and to decide if she’s ready enough for that. This kind of race, you need a horse to really jump well.”
• Visit the Gulfstream Park website and the Royal Ascot website
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