Ron Correll
Senior columnist
Tracksideview.com

We’ll try something new this week in addition to Picking Winners and Pick 4s we normally offer to our readers. It will be the Best Bet of the Day and will focus on Delightful Kiss in the Santa Anita Handicap at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif.

Of course, I’m assuming that Saturday’s program will not be rained out as it was last Saturday.

What I like most about Delightful Kiss is the morning line of 15-1. That’s a steal for a horse that just ran third to Quality Road in the Donn Handicap on Feb. 6 at Gulfstream Park in South Florida. The Santa Anita Handicap is his third race back off a layoff and his fourth try on a synthetic surface. His record over the fake dirt is two wins and a fourth. The fourth was over the Santa Anita course in the 2008 Breeders’ Cup Marathon, but he was only two lengths back. Trainer Pete Anderson is playing the ‘synthetic card.’

Anderson, a former jockey who rode the great Forego to a fourth-place in the 1973 Kentucky Derby behind Secretariat, wouldn’t be shipping Delightful Kiss across the country for an out-of-the-money finish.   Anderson is part-owner of Delightful Kiss and he is the only horse that he trains.

For the numbers’ players, his figures are equal to many in the Big ‘Cap.

Delightful Kiss is a closer and he should get a quick pace in the form of the front-running Mast Track.

Anderson thinks his horse can win this race and I’m going to tag along with him.