On Friday, the 3-year-old filly Hey Mamaluke will ship to Aqueduct off a 10 3/4-length debut victory. Based at Parx Racing with the family stable of Mike and Patricia Farro, she’ll meet five others in a six-furlong first-level optional claimer with a $70,000 purse.
The Farros currently have about 55 horses, and that number will grow when they set up their second string at Monmouth Park this summer. They led the Parx trainer standings in 2013, 2016, and 2017, and finished a close second last year.
Mike Farro has been training horses since 1978 and is a realist. He likes what he has seen so far from Hey Mamaluke and hopes she will be a player in Pennsylvania-bred stakes later this season.
“We expected her to run good first time out but didn’t know she was going to do that,” he said.
Farro estimates that he and Joseph Capriglione, who owns and bred Hey Mamaluke, have known each other 30 years. They claimed her dam, Pu Dew, for $5,000 at The Meadowlands in 2009. She ended her career with 18 wins from 76 starts.
Pu Dew’s first foal to race, Hey Braciole, put together a 22-5-8-2 record and earned $289,680 for Capriglione and Farro between 2016 and 2018.
“Hey Braciole was a hard-knocking filly and so was her mother,” Farro said. “When Manny [Esquivel] was breezing Hey Mamaluke before she ran, he told me she might be better than Hey Braciole.”
Esquivel was aboard for Hey Mamaluke’s win. He would have had the mount Friday, but he broke his collarbone in mid-January. Dylan Davis will ride from post 1.
Hey Mamaluke’s front-running debut victory wasn’t perfect, and she may not have beaten much. Still, she was dominant.
“I think it was a little scary out there for her and she just ran hard as she could,” Farro said. “There was a big pile of manure out in the track on the backstretch and it spooked her and she jumped. The boy almost fell, and then she just took off.”
This story originally appeared on DRF.com.
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