Strapping Groom Leads Toboggan Field

The first of two graded-stakes races on the Saturday simulcast card from Aqueduct is the $150,000 Grade III Toboggan Stakes, for three-year-olds and up going six furlongs. The field of eight includes the coupled entry of trainer David Jacobson’s Strapping Groom and Praetereo, the heavy race favorites in the morning line at 3-5. The main reason for that is the success Stapping Groom has had at the graded-stakes level. A seven-year-old with 26 lifetime starts, Strapping Groom won the Grade I Forego Stakes at Saratoga last summer at 15-1.

Race favorite a former Grade I winner

He followed that up with a third in the Grade I Vosburgh, and comes into the Toboggan after a year-ending win in the Gravesend Handicap, both of which featured strong fields. Preatereo, meanwhile, has been in the money in all five of his most recent starts, four of which were minor stakes, the last two at Aqueduct. He has a win three starts back at the AOC level. Jacobson has a third horse in the race in the form of Candyman E, listed as ML third choice at 5-1. He won the Spooky Mulder Stakes in his latest start.

Others will need big step forward to contend

Of the longer shots in the field, four-year-old Dads Caps (6-1) was most recently second in the Spooky Mulder, and third three starts back in the Aljimin Stakes at Belmont. He’s won three of six lifetime. At 12-1, Bet the Power has been first or second in his last six races, although all of those have come in the claiming or optional claiming level, after he had little success when trying lower-level stakes. He’s been in the money in 20 of 28 lifetime, with 10 wins and nine second-place finishes.