BY BROCK SHERIDAN<\/p>\n
Jockey Diego Herrera on Florida-bred Chicken Dance used a ground-saving trip in the second turn before steering into the two path at the top of the stretch to run down front-running Bolero Bay and win the $95,750 Not Surprising at Gulfstream Park Saturday. In producing his first career stakes victory, Chicken Dance was the best of nine 3-year-olds going a mile-and-a-sixteenth on the all-weather course, winning by a length-and-a-half ahead of Bolero Bay for the Florida-bred exacta.<\/p>\n
Chicken Dance raced mid-pack, two lengths behind Bolero Bay through quarter-mile splits of :24, :48.33 and 1:12.29 but the comfortable pace was not enough to hold off a determined Chicken Dance. The gelded son of Neolithic, the ever-productive resident at Pleasant Acres Stallions<\/a>, got to the front in deep stretch to finish in 1:42.66 on the fast track. Bolero Bay was two lengths clear of Khon Han in third followed by Moonstrocity, Florida-breds Nickel C, Justin Smiles and Move Jesse Move then Behold the Kind and Florida-bred Timshel.<\/p>\n Trained by Fernando Abreu, Chicken Dance paid $15.60 to win.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n It was the second straight victory and fifth in seven starts for Chicken Dance, who entered the Not Surprising off a head victory in a first level allowance race for older Florida-breds going a mile on the turf at Gulfstream on April 24.\u00a0<\/p>\n Making his first four starts at Gulfstream, Chicken Dance won first time out in a six-furlong maiden special weight in October. He returned in January after nearly three months off to take a $17,000 optional claiming starter allowance at six furlongs. Abreu switched him to the turf in February for his third race, but he finished third behind winning Florida-bred My Favorite Bird in a $35,000 optional claiming starter allowance going a mile-and-a-sixteenth. He then won under the same conditions going a mile on the turf on March 6 before traveling to Tampa Bay Downs for the $110,000 Lamholm South Sophomore<\/a> against Florida-breds, finishing fourth behind winner Mr Mo\u2019s Magic, again at a mile-and-a-sixteenth on the grass.<\/p>\n Chicken Dance has now earned $164,250 for owner Paterpop Racing.<\/p>\n Bred in Florida by Tom McCrocklin of Ocala, Chicken Dance is the last of six foals out of the Florida-bred mare Gator Hall, by Graeme Hall. Gator Hall has four winners from six starters including stakes-placed Florida-bred Windy City Red, by Chitu.\u00a0<\/p>\n Return to the June 6 issue of\u00a0Wire to Wire <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"BY BROCK SHERIDAN Jockey Diego Herrera on Florida-bred Chicken Dance used a ground-saving trip in the second turn…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298806,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[28,30,29,4974],"class_list":["post-298805","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-florida","tag-florida","tag-florida-headlines","tag-florida-news","tag-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298805","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=298805"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298805\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298806"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298805"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298805"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298805"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}