Gourmet Dinner a glutton for winning

GOURMET DINNER followed his usual recipe, stalked the lead and finished with a flourish Saturday to take the $100,000 Florida Stallion Affirmed Stakes at Calder Race Course by two and a half lengths.

The Trippi colt, whom I tipped at the Ocala Breeders' Sales Co. April auction of 2-year-olds in training, is now 3-for-3 with a pair of stakes wins for jockey Sebastian Madrid, trainer Peter Gulyas and owners Our Sugar Bear Stable. He also ordered-up the Florida Stallion Dr. Fager Stakes on Aug. 7, and has run his earnings to $137,390.

He was bred in Florida by Ocala Stud and William J. Terrill, and was a $40,000 purchase as Hip 277 at OBSAPR.

Gourmet Dinner covered seven furlongs in 1:25.69.

I recommended the now-two-time stakes winner despite an unplaced dam because his mama, Potluck Dinner (Pentelicus-Romantic Dinner, by Who's For Dinner) had already produced six foals of racing age, all had started, and four were winners, including two stakes horses, GASTON A. and I'mroyallymecke'd. Two more half-siblings, both by Montbrook, were major non-blacktype earners; On the Rail ($219,166) and Crazybrook (15 wins, $163,931 in the U.S.).

Gourmet Dinner also breezed a very credible 21.3 in the under-tack show.

Catching up with race results from my 187-horse Class of 2010 after more a week on the road (including my first trip to Saratoga, which will be detailed soon), we see there are now 69 starters (36.9 percent) and 23 maiden-breakers (12.3 percent of all selections, 33 percent of runners). Those horses have combined to make 146 starts, winning 26 races (17.8 percent wins from starts) and to finish second 23 times and third 14 times, an in-the-money rate of 43.2 percent. They have combined earnings of $781,987, or $5,356 per start.

Three other horses besides Gourmet Dinner have become stakes-placers, including G2-placed Alienation, G3-placed Stopspendingmaria and non-blacktype stakes-placed Blue 'em Away.

Follow the performances of all 187 of my sales picks at the end of this prior post.