Veteran Mare Choose Joy Making Season Debut Friday

Multiple Stakes-Winning 8YO Unraced Since Last July
Friday’s Rainbow 6 Jackpot Pool Estimated at $125,000

HALLANDALE BEACH, FL – Multiple stakes winner Choose Joy, an 8-year-old mare owned and trained by Steve Dwoskin, will make her long-awaited return when she races for the first time in more than a year Friday at Gulfstream Park.

The Sunshine Meet resumes with a 10-race program to kick off October when Choose Joy makes her first start in 435 days in featured Race 9, an optional claiming allowance for fillies and mares 3 and up scheduled for five furlongs on the grass.

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

Dwoskin purchased Choose Joy, by Munnings out of the Arch mare Elegantly, for just $35,000 at auction in 2019 and she has gone on to win nine races with eight seconds, two thirds and $412,745 in purse earnings from 26 lifetime starts.

In a career marked by stops and starts, Choose Joy hasn’t raced since she was third as the favorite behind a pair of next-out winners in a five-furlong optional claimer on Gulfstream’s all-weather Tapeta last July 26.

“She had a little problem, but we fixed it and she’s as sound as she can be,” Dwoskin said. “She’s doing good. She’s a neat mare. We just figured we’d give her one more shot.”

Choose Joy began her career on dirt in the fall of 2019, and she won two of five races before finding new life once switched to the turf. She has been first or second in 11 of 12 grass starts, five of them wins, while also finishing third or better six times in seven tries on Tapeta.

“I’m expecting her to run good. I played football until I was in my late 50s. Was I as good as I was when I was 25, 30? No, but still pretty good. Definitely smarter,” the 82-year-old Dwoskin said. “There’s nothing that will come up in a race that she hasn’t seen, and the condition is perfect for her.”

Choose Joy enjoyed her best season in 2021 with five wins and two seconds in eight starts including victories in the Bay Harbor Islands, Village of Biscayne Park and Miami Shores overnight handicaps as well as the Golden Beach Stakes, three of them at the course and distance.

This will be the second time Choose Joy has returned from an extended layoff, having gone 17 months between her 4-year-old finale and 6-year-old debut March 2, 2023, when she was beaten a neck running second in a five-furlong optional claimer on the Gulfstream turf after missing all of 2022. Three starts later she won the Hollywood Lakes overnight handicap.

Choose Joy’s most recent win came Dec. 3, 2023 in a five-furlong optional claimer that was rained off the grass to the Tapeta. Jockey Miguel Vasquez, aboard for 24 of her 26 starts including 21 in a row, rides back from Post 3 in a field of eight.

“She’s training just like she did when she was winning all those races. We’re looking forward to her running good,” Dwoskin said. “We’re excited to get her back. She should be right there.”

Among the competition are Beauty of the Sea, a 5-year-old multiple stakes-winning mare unraced since Feb. 22, and stakes-placed 8-year-old mare Bahamian Moon, a 12-time winner with $451,379 in purse earnings from 55 starts.

Friday’s Rainbow 6 Jackpot Pool Estimated at $125,000

Unsolved in six consecutive racing days, the 20-cent Rainbow 6 jackpot pool is estimated to reach $125,000 when the Sunshine Meet resumes with a 10-race program Friday at Gulfstream Park.

Friday’s sequence spans Races 5-10 and includes a pair of maiden special weight events for 2-year-olds on the main track. Race 6, for fillies going seven furlongs, drew a field of seven where four of the entrants were purchased for six figures at auction – Curly Sue ($350,000), Zany ($350,000), Miss T Bobo ($260,000) and Sovereign Gold ($250,000). Of those only Miss T Bobo has started, running third in her Sept. 12 unveiling over a wet track.

Race 8, at six furlongs, is for Florida-breds with nine set to line up led by $320,000 auction purchase My Miss Mo, a debut starter by champion Uncle Mo; Laigina, whose sire, Leinster, has already produced such 2-year-old winners as multiple stakes heroine Lennilu and stakes-placed Monster and Squire; another Leinster first-timer in Kathleen’s Derby; and Kathleen O’Connell-trained stablemate Magic Colors, a homebred daughter of Good Magic.

In the Rainbow 6, the jackpot pool is paid out only when there is a single unique ticket sold with all six winners. On days when there is no unique ticket, 70 percent of that day’s pool goes back to those bettors holding tickets with the most winners while 30 percent is carried over to the jackpot pool.

The Rainbow 6 last produced multiple mandatory payouts of $8,569.28 Sept. 14.

Outside the Rainbow 6 sequence is a third maiden special weight, for fillies and mares 3 and up scheduled for five furlongs on the grass, in Race 4. The 4-year-old Bucchero filly Tree C’s Kai looks to break through after finishing third six times including four of her last five starts.