King Of Dreams Another Stakes Winner For Air Force Blue

It was a second stakes winner in 24 hours for Air Force Blue on Saturday when King of Dreams (3c Air Force Blue x Cabbage Key, by A.P. Indy led home an Air Force Blue exacta in the Showing Up Stakes at Gulfstream Park.

Looking for his maiden stakes victory, King of Dreams shadowed Moonlite Strike for the first half of the one-mile race on Gulfstream’s new synthetic track. He made his move around the far turn and went to the outside of the leader to put himself in striking position as they entered the stretch.

He quickly had the lead after that and started to build a sizable margin from there. While he was extending his margin, Air Force Blue’s Fighting Force was rolling from the back of the field to take second by a solid 3 ¾ lengths at the line.

The fifth stakes winner for Air Force Blue, the Doug and Felicia Branham-bred King of Dreams has won four of his 2021 starts for trainer Juan Carlos Avila and Victoria’s Ranch. A runner in the Grade II Tampa Bay Derby earlier this year, he was already stakes placed before this race.

A $180,000 2-year-old purchase by his racing owner last year, King of Dreams is out of the stakes-placed Cabbage Key, who had a big weekend with King of Dreams only one of two stakes performers for the mare. The other was her Grade II winning grandson Tiz The Bomb, who finished second in the Grade I Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf on Friday.

Cabbage Key is the dam of six winners from nine to race with both Tiz The Bomb’s dam Tiz The Key fourth in a Grade I and that one’s half-brother War Academy fourth in a Grade II in addition to King of Dreams’ stakes win.

Cabbage Key also had a Practical Joke colt in 2020.