Del Mar / July 31 / Race 8 / 5:35 PDT

At 9-2 on the morning line, the Mike Puype-trained mare Rosa Divina seems to offer decent value in this maiden claiming sprint for older fillies and mares on the Poly.

Rosa Divina will be making her third start today. In her debut, over Hollywood Park’s cushion track last year, she took no money but put in a decent run to finish fourth and earn a speed figure of 52. Then she returned a month later, this time getting involved in a speed duel in fast fractions. For that effort she received a speed figure of 82. That is a number that would hit very hard in this field. Indeed, it means that Rosa Divina has the best last-out speed figure in this field by a margin of 11 points.

Our biggest concern today is the layoff. Rosa Divina has not raced in 396 days. This is no freshening. This means something went wrong. And adding to our concern is that we don’t love the way Puype’s layoff horses have run at this young meet. However, he has gotten a couple of big performances out of his first-time starters (normally not his strength), which suggests that he did not institute a blanket no-cranking policy for this showcase meet. Therefore, we are going to ascribe the poor performances off layoffs to small sample size.

Puype’s overall rating off of layoffs is a respectable 77, and Rosa Divina has been training well for her return. In addition, her early speed (Pace Projector has her just off the early lead today) should stand her in good stead at today’s 5.5F distance. Rosa Divina is our selection.

The horse who scares us the most, without question, is Faith Proof, who comes in off a layoff of her own, has a nice Pedigree Rating for synthetic sprints (85), and impressed the private clockers with her gate workout over the Poly a week ago.

The play:

Win bet on Rosa Divina.

Exacta box of Rosa Divina and Faith Proof.

Trifecta using Rosa Divina and Faith Proof in the one-hole, the same two horses plus LL Cool Jo and Theatrical Cast in the two-hole, and all four of these horses in the three-hole.