2-year-olds show off today

Hollywood Park runs the meet's first stakes for 2-year-old males today, and it will be interesting to see if the better young horses come out of that race or the maiden sprint an hour earlier.

The stakes is The Real Quiet, a 1 1/16-mile race that finds Gateway to Glory winner Charlie's Moment in the outside post and the excuse-ridden maiden Mark S the Cooler starting from the rail. When We Met goes for two in a row, and Escalon tries to bounce back from finishing third as the Cal Cup Juvenile favorite.

The straight-maiden race I refered to, the seventh race today, has a bunch of classy-looking colts: Keep Thinking, a $2.4 million son of A.P. Indy making his second start for Sheikh Mohammed; Position A, a $675,000 first-timer for B. Wayne Hughes; Molten Lava, a first-timer for Juddmonte Farms; and fast-working Flat Bold and The Pamplemousse. All could get beaten this time by Jeff Mullins' swift Gato Go Win, but watch out down the road.