Woodbine 'double' nets repeat winner, new maiden-breaker, and a winning Pick-3 ticket

Victories in races 1 and 3 at Woodbine Thursday boosted the earnings of a bargain 2-year-old near the six-figure mark, added a new winner to the ranks of my 2010 juvenile sales selections, and let me cash a decent Pick 3 ticket with my sales-tips as singles on either end of the sequence.

Not a bad start to the holiday weekend.

When I saw that recent maiden-breaker Admitit (E Dubai-Fine Day, by Fantastic Light) was facing a small and beatable group in her first try against winners and that maiden Officer's Affair (Officer-Ontheqt, by Mazel Trick) also had a good chance in her third lifetime start and first for a claiming tag, I quickly considered the possibility of a cheap Pick 3 play that relied on my sales tips of more than a year ago coming through as singles on the ticket. I could (and did) scurry over to Remington Park on my lunch break to make the play.

After glancing at the horses in Race 2 of the sequence -- only a five-horse field, but one I thought could be hotly contested -- I just decided to buy that race, for the ticket cost would be only $5 and it would be hard to hit it and still lose money. (Though I managed to do just that last month on an $8 Pick 3 at Penn, when a 1/5 shot -- who had no business going off at 1/5 -- could only manage to dead-heat with a 12/1 horse for the win in R2 of that sequence. My "winning" ticket was worth something like $7.50, while the few who held the other sequence were paid $73.25 for $1.)

Even by buying R2 today (which was won by a horse named Even, matter of fact, who went off as the 6/5 favorite), and though Officer's Affair wound up the 2/1 favorite in Race 3, the ticket paid $43.60, a pretty good score for a $5 wager, which I punched twice. ... My apologies to one particular person probably reading this whom I should've tipped so he could get in on it too, if he wanted.

At any rate, Admitit took 10 tries to break her maiden, finishing second or third in the first eight before finally putting forth a dull effort in career start No. 9. She has bounced back from that first off-the-board effort to win twice in a row during June for owner Saffie Joseph and trainer Ricky Griffith at a $40K tag, among maidens and now among fellow winners.

I recommended Admitit before she sold to Joseph for a mere $20,000 as Hip 1046 at last year's Ocala April sale. She has now banked $96,790 from two wins, five places and three shows in 11 starts on Polytrack and turf, and her 2 1/4-length win on synth today while "taken in hand" by jock Luis Contreras gives every appearance of a filly who can still move forward.

Admitit was bred in Kentucky by Hot Pepper Farm.

After Even disposed of the field in Race 2, I was eager to see the results of Race 3, both to know whether I had a new maiden-breaker from the 187-horse group of sales tips I made last year, and to know whether my wager was going to be returned at a premium rate. I was pleased to learn that Officer's Affair fought clear in the stretch to win by a length and a quarter under Tyler Pizarro, giving me a double-dose of satisfaction.

Officer's Affair was a pricier horse out of the same OBS April sale that produced Admitit; an $80,000 purchase as Hip 224. She was bred in Ontario by Reade Baker Racing Stable Inc., but campaigned now by owners Robert Harvey, A. Wortzman and G. Ledson. She is trained by Sid Attard.

Officer's Affair now has a win from three starts for $19,816. She is the 87th winner from the aforementioned 187-horse group of sales recommendations I made on this blog from various 2-year-old auctions of 2010. That's 46.5 percent of all horses chosen.

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