The Year Opens With a Weak Dirt Program at San Isidro

Very low-quality racing will be staged this Friday, with the Especial Badruddin as the main event, offering a purse of just ARS 3,700,000 to the winner—an embarrassing look to open the year

Kelly Rose Looks to Bounce Back in the Badruddin Special / HSI

A new season begins for Argentine racing, though hopes that anything might change remain as dim as ever. Twelve races are scheduled for this Friday at San Isidro, where the card will test the special category, with weights assigned according to number of wins.

That spotlight falls on the Badruddin Special, for fillies and mares aged three and up with a minimum of three victories—a condition created at La Plata and of questionable application at best. The purse is a paltry ARS 3,700,000 to the winner, before deductions, a figure bordering on the absurd.

Handicaps have long paid poorly at the Jockey Club Argentino—truth be told, nearly every category does—but this represents another step down the path of embarrassing prize money, the kind that makes sustaining the sport virtually impossible. Even winning barely covers expenses.

While officials continue down a road they’ve traveled for years—one seemingly reserved for them alone—the passion soldiers on, at least until one day it no longer does. Against that backdrop, eight runners have been declared for the Badruddin, with Kelly Rose (Il Campione, 58) looking to rebound.

The gray mare disappointed in the Handicap Resuello in early October, but returns aiming to recapture the form she showed when winning the Handicap Academia Nacional de Agronomía y Veterinaria.

Standing in her way is the consistent Mi Negra Paula (Reflecting, 58), currently in the midst of a solid run of form that peaked with a victory in the Listed Clásico Etoile. Second in the Resuello, third in the Illegally Blonde Special and fourth in the Clásico Día de la Soberanía Nacional, she will not be easy to dismiss.

Rollanda (Bodemeister, 56) remains in debt and seeks another chance, while Hello Candy (Señor Candy, 56) has proven capable at this level, even if she hasn’t been seen at her best of late.

Among the longer-priced hopes, Emalvi (Orpen, 56) and Dama del Armiño (Il Campione, 54) harbor ambitions in what stands as the feature of a card sorely lacking in quality. As usual.