He won the first running of the Jersey Shore Stakes with Surely Six when it was run at Atlantic City Race Course in 1992 and now trainer Ben Perkins, Jr. would surely like to have another trophy to make bookends. So he’ll send out Well Spelled in Saturday’s edition of the Grade 3 $100,000 event and the colt looks well spotted.

            “He’s a nice, solid horse and he tries hard every time,” Perkins said of the gray or roan son of Spellbinder out of the Well Decorated mare Well.

            Isn’t He Clever, making his second start from Steve Asmussen’s barn, is the lone stakes winner in the field of six 3-year-olds and each is looking for his first graded stakes win. Well Spelled has only finished off the board in one of his eight races and that was two starts back in the Tom Ridge Stakes at Presque Isle Downs when he had a legitimate excuse.

            “We ran him on the synthetic (surface) for the first time in that race and that didn’t seem to work out,” said Perkins, who was the leading trainer here in 2000.

            After he got back to his home track, Well Spelled closed well late in an optional claiming race against older horses and he seems to be improving in his efforts. He is also ideally suited to the six furlong distance of the Jersey Shore.

            Incidentally, two of Well Spelled’s competitor’s, Wildcat Creek and Cape Cod Canal, were sired by Wildcat Heir. Perkins trained the winner of the 2004 Icecapade Stakes and the 2005 Teddy Drone Stakes at Monmouth during the top notch sprinter’s career when he won six of 12 starts and earned $424,460.

            Wildcat Heir has gone on to a stellar second career. For the past several years, he has been the top ranked sire in Florida and he is also the fourth-ranked third-crop sire in North America at the current time. Wildcat Heir sired Pomeroy’s Pistol, who finished fourth in the 2011 Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint for Amy Tarrant’s Hardacre Farm.