Mark Hennig Feeling Confident With Gulfstream Oaks Entrant Gun Song

R Lee Lewis’ Gun Song, an eye-catching winner of her most recent start over the track last month, steps up to stakes company and stretches out around two turns for the first time for Saturday’s $200,000 Gulfstream Park Oaks (G2) presented FanDuelTV.

The 1 1/16-mile Oaks is the last of Gulfstream’s series of Championship Meet stakes for 3-year-old fillies and carries 200 qualifying points for the Kentucky Oaks (G1) to the top five finishers on a 100-50-25-15-10 basis.

Gun Song is a chestnut daughter of 2017 Horse of the Year Gun Runner, who capped his career with a victory in the 2018 Pegasus World Cup (G1) at Gulfstream. Gun Song’s mare, Nicole H, was a six-time stakes-winning sprinter including the 2011 Distaff Handicap (G2).

Never worse than third in four starts, two of them wins, Gun Song stalked the pace for a half-mile before taking over the lead and drawing away to a 5 ¾-length optional claiming allowance victory Feb. 9 at Gulfstream. It was her longest race to date and first time over a fast main track.

Trainer Mark Hennig opted to skip Gulfstream’s one-mile Davona Dale (G2) March 2 and point for the Oaks, a race he won in 2011 with Tap Dance.

“She’s doing great. She came out of the last race very well,” Hennig said. “She’s done well. I considered the Davona Dale, but I just didn’t want to come back that quick with her. It’s a long season, especially if we get lucky and wind up in some of those bigger races down the line.

“She’s out of a pure sprinter and yet she’s a real leggy filly,” he added. “I always kind of felt like she wanted to stretch out, so I was happy to see the way she performed when we got her out to a mile. Hopefully when we stretch to two turns, she does the same.”

Her last race was the second straight since adding blinkers for Gun Song, who debuted with a neck victory sprinting six furlongs last October before finishing a troubled third in a seven-furlong optional claiming allowance in December, both under jockey Dylan Davis at Aqueduct.

“She was a filly that never was really focused. When we put the blinkers on her, that helped a lot, but the light just hadn’t completely gone on for her and I think in that last race it definitely did,” Hennig said. “When she broke her maiden, Dylan said she was just kind of toying around between the two horses. She had a horse on either side of her and was just kind of looking at them rather than running forward.

“The second race she ran kind of flat, but she came out of it with a really bad bruise on her foot and we missed about 10 days with her because of that,” he added. “When we came back down to Florida, I ran her a little quicker than I wanted to but that’s when the race came up. Finally last time everything kind of came together.”

Hall of Fame jockey John Velazquez, aboard for each of her two Gulfstream races, gets the return call from Post 6 in a field of nine. They are rated as second choice on the morning line at 4-1 behind 8-5 program favorite Ways and Means, making her first start since running second in the Spinaway (G1) Sept. 3 at Saratoga.

“She just kind of ran away from them down the stretch last time, which was good to see. The race before she kind of got stuck as the one in front and she didn’t get to stalk. She was the stalkee rather than the stalker,” Hennig said. “With her not really understanding what it was all about yet, I think that kind of hurt her that day, but she came back and made a good showing.

“It’s a lot tougher race. The road gets tougher all the time, so we’ll see how we go, but we’re confident in our horse,” he added. “She couldn’t be doing better. Hopefully she performs the way we think she can.”