Red-Hot Barboza Takes Two Shots in Groupie Doll Handicap

Great Venezuela, Tiffany Gold Represent Trainer in Tapeta Sprint

HALLANDALE BEACH, FL – Multiple stakes-winning stablemates Great Valenzuela and Tiffany Gold are set to end their summer vacations and help trainer Victor Barboza Jr. maintain his recent momentum in Saturday’s $60,000 Groupie Doll overnight handicap at Gulfstream Park.

The 5 ½-furlong Groupie Doll for fillies and mares 3 and up on the all-weather Tapeta course is the first of two stakes on an 11-race program headlined by the $75,000 Juvenile Fillies Sprint going six furlongs on the main track. Post time is 12:20 p.m.

Over the last three weekends Barboza has run horses on seven of nine racing days with 10 wins, four of them coming Nov. 7, to move him into third place in the Sunshine Meet standings with 24 from 80 starters (30 percent), trailing Jose D’Angelo (27) and perennial leader Saffie Joseph Jr. (26). The fall stand runs through Nov. 22.

Barboza capped his four-win day with Express Factory’s King Manolete, a 2-year-old Florida-bred son of freshman sire Roadster that captured a seven-furlong maiden optional claimer on the main track by 2 ½ lengths in his career debut.

“We had a good day, but I think you need all the time to have luck to win four races,” Barboza said. “I think it was a very important day for the baby who won. I think he’s going to be my best horse for the next year. He is a very good baby and he has a good future for the long distances. Maybe the second try will be an allowance or a state[-bred] race in December. To have horses for the future is very good for the barn.”

Barboza has proven commodities in 5-year-old mares Great Venezuela and Tiffany Gold, who have combined to win 16 races, five stakes, and $724,755 in purse earnings from 35 starts with 28 top three finishes.

“We decided to give them some time off,” Barboza said. “The owners wanted to keep them here in Florida and not move them around so that’s what we did. The vacation is very important and they’re doing very well.”

Orlyana Farm’s Great Venezuela (Post 3, Diego Herrera) is the 9-5 program favorite and 124-pound topweight in the Groupie Doll. She has been third or better in 19 of 21 starts with 10 wins, seven of them in 10 tries on the Tapeta. Her last two starts have been on the grass – a third to Tiffany Gold in the July 18 Lady’s Island overnight handicap and an optional claiming win Aug. 17, both at five furlongs.

Among Great Venezuela’s Tapeta wins are the 2025 Islamorada and Portofino Bay overnight handicaps, both sprinting 5 ½ furlongs. She’s also a stakes winner on the grass courtesy of the five-furlong Lightning City at Tampa Bay Downs, also last year.

“Great Valenzuela is the queen of the Tapeta track. She loves the Tapeta track and she has come back very well. I like the race for her. The field is not too big so hopefully there isn’t much traffic and she can run a good race,” Barboza said. “It’s very important for her, the race. Her earnings are [almost] $495,000 and I would like to get her over the half a million [mark]. It would be very important for the owner and for me and the breeder, everybody.”

Lean Entertainment’s Tiffany Gold (Post 1, Edwin Gonzalez, 4-1, 123 pounds) hasn’t raced since defending her title in July’s Lady’s Island. She has tried the Tapeta three times with one win, that coming in her 2024 debut, with her other five wins coming on the grass.

“She’s a very good filly and very, very fast. I think she’s a little better on the turf, but she has won on the synthetic,” Barboza said. “Tiffany is a good mare all the time. If she can be in front and stay in one lane, she can be very dangerous. The post position is not the best position, but she is very fast.”

Cal-Ram Racing and William Sacco’s 4-year-old New Jersey-bred filly Duboff (Post 4, Paco Lopez, 3-1, 121) takes a two-race win streak into the Groupie Doll for trainer Greg Sacco with wins in three of her four starts this year. She is 6-for-12 lifetime, all on turf, her two recent wins Aug. 22 and Oct. 7 each coming in front-running fashion at 5 ½ and five furlongs, respectively.

Trainer Mike Lerman also entered a pair of horses in Vindicate Cha Cha and Secret Revenge. Clear Stars Stable and Mitre Box Stable’s Vindicate Cha Cha (Post 7, Leonel Reyes, 7-2, 123) won the 5 ½-furlong Little Miss Holly overnight handicap June 14 on the Gulfstream Tapeta and returned with a 1 ¼-length optional claiming triumph on the grass Oct. 25, both times leading from start to finish.

Vindicate Cha Cha began her career winless in three tries on dirt but the 5-year-old mare has won six of her 13 races on synthetic with two seconds and three thirds.

“We couldn’t get a race to go, and it was a frustrating summer with her sitting on the sidelines. She was fresh and that’s why she ran the way that she did last time,” Lerman said. “It was her first one on the turf which I wasn’t necessarily expecting, just because she hadn’t won on the turf in her life and she has a stronger turn of foot on the synthetic. I was kind of just using that as a prep for this race.

“I like that she drew the outside,” he added. “She’s steadily developed and gotten better through her career, and she’s still fresh and happy. The byproduct of her not racing all summer is she’s fresh and she’s raring to go. Now that she’s added the turf dimension, hopefully she can be a stakes-caliber horse all winter going forward.”

Lerman owns 5-year-old Nyquist mare Secret Revenge (Post 5, Carol Cedeno, 20-1, 118), who has been third or better in six of 15 starts with two wins. All but one of her races have come on the main track, a five-furlong maiden special weight sprint on Tapeta in February 2025 where she ran sixth.

“She’s healthy and fresh,” Lerman said. “She’s a two-other-than and it’s hard to get those races to go on the dirt. I didn’t really care for her one synthetic race early in her career but that was before she has developed a little bit. I want to run her to get a race into her. She’s a Nyquist and she’s valuable as a broodmare, I think, but we’d like to get her earnings up before we send her in that direction.”

Imaginary Stables’ Braganza (Post 2, Jose Morelos, 10-1, 121) and Eric Sizemore’s Fantastic Flame (Post 6, Heriberto Figueroa, 8-1, 119) complete the field.

Co-bred by trainer William ‘Buff’ Bradley and his father, the late Kentucky State Senator Fred Bradley, Groupie Doll won 12 of 23 races and nearly $2.7 million in purse earnings from 2011-14, capping her career with a popular and dominant victory in the 2014 Hurricane Bertie (G3) at Gulfstream Park. She earned the Eclipse Award as champion female sprinter of 2012 and 2013 by winning seven graded-stakes during that span, four of them Grade 1 including back-to-back editions of the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint. Campaigned the Bradleys for most of her career, she made her last two starts for Whisper Hill Farm after fetching $3.1 million at Keeneland’s November 2013 breeding stock sale. A finalist for induction into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 2025 and 2025, she was pensioned from broodmare duty in May.