Gulfy, newcomer-owned colt, heads to key Belmont Stakes prep at Aqueduct

Tommy Torres went from fantasy baseball to the brink of the Belmont Stakes in less than a year, and Gulfy gave that jump real stakes on the Aqueduct dirt. The 3-year-old colt was entered in race 9, the $200,000 Peter Pan Stakes (G3) at Belmont at the Big A, a 1 1/8-mile test that carried Belmont Stakes implications with the first three finishers earning entry and starting-fee waivers for the June classic, aside from the Triple Crown supplemental fee.

Gulfy arrived with a profile that fit both the moment and the market. The Constitution colt, out of Gulf Coast, was bred in Kentucky by WinStar Farm, LLC, sold for $500,000 as a yearling, and ran for Torres, trained by Gustavo Rodriguez and ridden by Kendrick Carmouche at 123 pounds. He was listed at 8/1 in a field of six, a price that reflected both his upside and the depth of the stakes jump ahead of him.

The colt also brought legitimate recent form into the race. Gulfy had won two straight going into the Peter Pan, including a game allowance victory in his first start after Rodriguez claimed him. Before that, he had finished second in a maiden race at a mile, then broke his maiden in a claiming race and followed with another allowance score in March. That kind of quick rise from claiming races to a Grade 3 Belmont prep is exactly what keeps owners, trainers and fans glued to this stage of the spring.

The Peter Pan has long mattered as more than a steppingstone. Equibase lists Belmont Stakes winners that came through the race, including Coastal in 1979, Danzig Connection in 1985, A.P. Indy in 1992, Tonalist in 2014 and Arcangelo in 2023. More recently, Hill Road won the 2025 Peter Pan and Antiquarian took the 2024 running, a reminder that the race still feeds directly into the Belmont conversation at a time when every route to the Triple Crown series gets closely measured.

For Torres, the storyline carried a broader appeal than one colt alone. A fantasy baseball fan and father who entered racing only months ago, he had already advanced from outsider status to owning a horse in a key stakes race with Belmont implications. That is the modern on-ramp into ownership in sharp relief: lower barriers to entry, faster access to the sport’s biggest stages, and a colt like Gulfy making the case that a fresh owner can still land in the middle of a high-value spring pathway at Aqueduct.