Coppola Favored to Defend Title in $115,000 Silks Run

Aiming to Become Third Repeat Winner in 5F Grass Sprint

HALLANDALE BEACH, FL – Hammer Time Stable and Sport of Kings Racing Partners’ Coppola, already a two-time stakes winner at the Championship Meet, goes for his third in a row as the defending champion in Saturday’s $115,000 Silks Run at Gulfstream Park.

The 11th running of the Silks Run for 4-year-olds and up scheduled for five furlongs on the grass is the first of two stakes on a 12-race program, followed by the $165,000 Hurricane Bertie (G3) for older fillies and mares sprinting 6 ½ furlongs on the main track.

First race post time is 12:50 p.m.

Coppola, a 10-time winner of $846,536 in purses from 28 career starts, is aiming to become the third back-to-back winner of the Silks Run, followed by Power Alert (2015-16) and Carotari (2020-21), both trained by Brian Lynch.

Dale Romans has trained Coppola starting with the 2023 season, posting an 8-1-3 record from 23 races. The 6-year-old son of Into Mischief made his first four starts for trainer Jonathan Thomas, was sold for $105,000 at Keeneland’s horses of racing age sale in November 2022, and raced once in New York for Carlos Martin – all on the dirt – before Romans took over and made the surface switch.

“Carlos thought he needed the turf. He’s my good friend and he sent him down here to me, and we’ve had him ever since,” Romans said. “Carlos has a good eye for picking out horses and he spotted that horse at the training sale. We liked him from the beginning, but I didn’t know he was going to do what he’s done. You never know a horse is going to go two or three years running as hard as he has without a break, in good races against good horses.”

Coppola has raced seven times at Gulfstream, four of them stakes wins – two straight editions of the Gulfstream Park Turf Sprint, the 2024 Silks Run and Dec. 21 Janus. All of them have come at five furlongs, a distance where he has five wins and a third in nine tries overall.

“He loves it here. He loves the five-eighths,” Romans said. “He’s doing good. We’ll give it a go again.”

After coming from off the pace to earn his stakes victories last winter, Coppola has won each of the last two in front-running fashion, both by three-quarters of a length, the latter as the favorite. Prior to the Janus, Coppola had lost four straight since taking the William Garrett Handicap on a sloppy main track at Horseshoe Indiana last July.

“Even the races he didn’t win, he ran well against the best. He’s a cool horse. He’s got a little following now,” Romans said. “The five-eighths really helps him. He’s a better horse this year than he was last year. Hopefully he’ll keep on going.”

The even-money morning line favorite in a field of seven, Coppola drew the rail and will have Luis Saez aboard for the first time.

Two horses that ran behind Coppola in the Gulfstream Park Turf Sprint, Capture the Lion and Reef Runner, also return in the Silks Run. Capture the Lion, owned and trained by Saffie Joseph Jr., closed to be second at odds of 39-1 in his first race since being claimed for $62,500 off a five-furlong sprint on the all-weather Tapeta course Jan. 1.

“He ran well first time for us,” Joseph said. “He was wide the whole way from a tough post. It actually looked like he was going to drop back at the quarter pole, but he stayed on really well. It never looked like he was going to win, but he got pretty close. Smaller field this time. He’s drawn outside again but hopefully he can work out a better trip. We still have to beat the favorite but if he can run as well as he did the last time, he’ll have a good chance to be close.”

Capture the Lion, 4-1 on the morning line, will be making his 16th start and fifth on the turf, where he ran second in and won a seven-furlong optional claimer last summer at Woodbine. Edwin Gonzalez, up in the Gulfstream Park Turf Sprint, returns to ride from Post 6.

“All his turf form is very good. He’s never really run bad on the grass, even when he went seven furlongs. It probably was a little too far for him,” Joseph said. “We thought the five furlongs would be perfect for him [and] 5 ½ at other tracks if we decide to take him around in the summer. He didn’t run on the turf much and when he did run, he ran really good races.”

Alex and JoAnn Lieblong’s Florida homebred Reef Runner (Post 4, 9-2) was only a neck behind Capture the Lion in third in the Gulfstream Park Turf Sprint. The 4-year-old bay son of The Big Beast returned to be a troubled fourth, beaten less than three lengths, in the five-furlong Turf Dash Feb. 22 at Tampa Bay Downs.

Grade 3-placed Biz Biz Buzz, entered to run eight days after being claimed out of a runner-up finish to Xy Speed Feb. 28 at Gulfstream; three-time stakes-placed Souper Quest, sixth after setting the pace in Tampa’s Turf Dash; Eamonn, winner of the 2023 Select at Monmouth Park; and Foxtrotanna complete the field.