As the final Oaklawn stakes race for 3-year-old fillies, the Fantasy has a proud history as a prep race for the Kentucky Oaks, beginning with 1977 winner Our Mims who ran second in the Oaks en route to champion 3-year-old filly honors. Fantasy winners who went on to win the Oaks include Davona Dale (1979), Bold N Determined (1980), Heavenly Cause (1981), Tiffany Lass (1986), Lite Light (1991), Blushing K D (1997) and Rachel Alexandra (2009). Eight Belles won this before her second-place finish in the 2008 Kentucky Derby, while other winners who finished in the Oaks top three include Flying Partner (1982), My Darling One (1984), Rascal Lass (1985), Jeanne Jones (1988), Escena (1996), Classy Cara (2000), and High Heels (2007).

Unfortunately this year, most likely due to the Fair Grounds Oaks being run two weeks later than in previous years as well as the Grade 1 Ashland being scheduled for Saturday, the Fantasy Stakes has come up short on entrants, as only four fillies will go postward on Friday. The good news, though, is that all four are quality entrants.

Blind Luck already has three Grade 1 wins in her career, including most impressively her victory in December’s Hollywood Starlet, going this distance over Hollywood’s Cushion track. Her 3-year-old campaign began with a nose win in the Grade 1 Las Virgenes, followed by a narrow third-place defeat in the Grade 1 Santa Anita Oaks. While most of her career has been over California’s synthetic surfaces, her debut was a maiden claiming effort at Calder which she won by over thirteen lengths. Obviously the question is whether she still has an affinity for dirt, and the answer will determine whether or not her connections press onward to the Kentucky Oaks.

Top jockey Garrett Gomez accompanies Santa Anita Oaks runner-up All Due Respect in from California, and that says a lot about her chances. As a 2-year-old, she was a step below her peers in four tries, but she impressively broke her maiden over a muddy Fair Grounds track in January before nearly wiring the Santa Anita Oaks field. It will be curious to see how well she’ll perform on a fast dirt track. Grade 3 Honeybee winner No Such Word has home track advantage, while Tidal Pool comes in off an upper-level allowance win versus older mares, and with a new jockey, Calvin Borel.

Short fields like this don’t offer much betting value, and it’s unlikely any one filly will be an overwhelming favorite. With races like this, sometimes it’s best to just sit back and enjoy the show.

  – Valerie Grash, Foolish Pleasure

Further Reading:

  Fantasy Stakes – Wikipedia Entry

The Wood Memorial is one of the older races on the racing calendar, having first been run in 1925; it’s named for Eugene D. Wood, a New York politician (in the truest sense of that phrase, unfortunately) and member of the Metropolitan Jockey Club, which opened the old Jamaica racetrack in 1903.

The most recent winner of the Wood to go on to win the Kentucky Derby is Fusaichi Pegasus in 2000; last year’s winner, I Want Revenge, was likely to have been the latest in a line of Wood winners to go to the Derby starting gate as the favorite, but an injury resulted in I Want Revenge being scratched the morning of the race. Other Wood winners who have been favored in the Derby are Easy Goer (who finished second to Sunday Silence in 1989), Damascus (1967), Bold Ruler (1957), and Native Dancer (1953). Notable horses that have captured the Wood/Derby double are Triple Crown winners Count Fleet (1943), Assault (1946), and Seattle Slew (1977).

Despite its small field of six, this year’s Wood Memorial has shaped as one of this season’s more interesting Derby preps. One of two horses considered at this point a Derby favorite, Todd Pletcher’s Eskendereya, passed on last week’s Florida Derby to try this spot after his visually impressive eight-length win in the Fountain of Youth. Eskendereya has won comfortably won three of his last four races; the loss came in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, which one might throw out, given that it was run over a synthetic surface and that Eskendereya is three-for-three on dirt.

In winning last month’s Gotham, Awesome Act overcame a lack of experience on dirt; a four-month layoff; and a transatlantic flight. He’s been training at Belmont since then, and in this race tries to prove that his victory in the Gotham was more than just a win over a weak field. He faces much tougher competition in this spot.

Most Happy Fella comes back after a win over the inner track in an allowance/optional claimer on March 19th. This is his first stakes attempt in a nine-race career and he is likely to be the race’s pacesetter, though it’s hard to see him hanging in there at the end. Carnivore is a lightly-raced Mid-Atlantic shipper who’s hit the board in each of his three starts, all of which were maiden races. He won his last well after breaking a step slow and racing three wide; he’s improved as the distance has gotten longer, but this represents a huge step up for him.

The Derby trail’s not the Derby trail without a handful of Nick Zito starters; last week Zito took the Florida Derby with the lightly regarded Ice Box, and this week he comes back with the horse who came to him as a Derby prospect last fall. Jackson Bend dominated in state-restricted races at Calder as a two-year-old, winning five of six starts. He’s been second in his two Derby preps and makes his first start outside Florida in the Wood. He’s never been worse than second, but his most recent second-place finish was eight and a half lengths behind Eskendereya in the Fountain of Youth. Jeremy Rose is off and Calvin Borel gets the mount, which seems an unusual choice for Zito, but one clearly made with an eye on the Kentucky Derby: Zito named Borel a month ago, locking up a jockey who knows the Churchill strip and who owns two wins in the Derby.

Schoolyard Dreams showed guts and heart when beaten a nostril hair by Odysseus in the Tampa Bay Derby. He’s hit the board in all five lifetime starts; both of his second-place finishes have come in stakes races, and his second to Rule in the Sam Davis seems a little less impressive now, given Rule’s third-place finish last week in the Florida Derby. Jeremy Rose lost this mount, too, replaced by Ramon Dominguez; the availability of Dominguez was a major factor in trainer Derek Ryan’s decision to run Schoolyard Dreams in this spot.

  – Teresa Genaro, Brooklyn Backstretch

Further Reading:

  Wood Memorial – NYRA

Not many preps for the Kentucky Oaks or Derby can claim a similar record: Since it was first run in 1936, 31 fillies have won the Oaks after prepping in the Ashland Stakes. In 1999, it was Silverbulletday, winner of the Ashland in a record time of 1:41 3/5, who went on to capture the Kentucky Oaks en route to 3-year-old filly champion honors. In 2004, Ashado followed up a second-place finish in the Ashland with an Oaks win, trouncing Madcap Escapade, the favorite that year off her Ashland victory. In 2008, eventual champion Proud Spell scored the Oaks off a third-place finish in the Ashland.

This year’s edition of the Ashland lives up to the race’s rich history with 2009 juvenile filly champion She Be Wild and Canadian juvenile filly champion Negligee topping the entries. The two have met before, in the Grade 1 Alcibiades Stakes at Keeneland last October. Negligee got the win that day, beating favored She Be Wild by 1 3/4 lengths. She Be Wild returned to win the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, a race in which Negligee finished sixth. The Ashland will be the filly’s first start since November and she comes in with a string of solid works (including a bullet five furlongs at Palm Meadows on March 24).

Beautician, winless since her maiden debut at Churchll last July, starts off a second in the Grade 3 Honeybee last month. The filly has made something of a career as a runner-up, placing in four of her seven career starts.

Among the other starters are Evening Jewel, second by a narrow nose to Blind Luck in the Grade 1 Las Virgenes at Santa Anita in February; Upperline, making her third start of the year and an allowance winner over the Keeneland Polytrack in 2009; Apple Charlotte, a Smart Strike filly with two wins and two seconds in four starts; and It’s Tea Time, an ambitiously placed maiden winner making her third lifetime start. She’s an intriguing longshot, switching from turf to synthetic and cutting back from 1 1/8 miles. Trainer Shug McGaughey will saddle Protesting, a maiden winner over the Keeneland Polytrack and half-sibling to Parading, who won the 2009 Grade 3 Ben Ali Stakes in the second-fastest time at the distance recorded over the Keeneland surface.

  – Jessica Chapel, Railbird

Further Reading:

  Ashland Stakes – Wikipedia

Since its inception in 1923 and through the end of the twentieth century, the Illinois Derby wasn’t a Kentucky Derby prep race at all. Having been hosted at a variety of Illinois tracks, including the now defunct Sportsman’s Park and Aurora Downs, the Illinois Derby was positioned on the racing calendar either on the day of the Kentucky Derby itself or before the Preakness. That all changed in 2001 when the Illinois Derby was moved to four weeks before the Kentucky Derby, and it immediately made an impact as a prep race when the 2002 winner War Emblem went on to win the Kentucky Derby.

This year’s edition features an evenly matched group of eight from all corners of the country. The morning line favorite and the field’s only multiple graded stakes winner is Backtalk. He will be making his second start of the year after starting 2010 with a win in the Sportman’s Paradise stakes at Delta Downs. The son of Smarty Jones and sibling to multiple graded stakes winner Bsharpsonata has only lost twice in six career starts, both losses coming at the hands of fellow Kentucky Derby hopefuls Dublin and Noble’s Promise. Rider Miguel Mena has been aboard for all four wins and retains the ride again here. Trainer Tom Amoss had Backtalk put in a very sharp workout at his Fair Grounds home base on March 25th, working six-furlongs in 1:09, a particularly fast workout considering the racetrack over which it was run.

Shipping in for one last try to get into the Kentucky Derby starting gate is a quartet from California, all of whom will be making their debut on a conventional dirt track. Worth taking another look at the San Felipe as three of these four Californians are coming into the Illinois Derby off of that race and they are American Lion, Stephen’s Got Hope and Dave in Dixie.

The most accomplished of this group is American Lion, who is winless from two starts this year after capping his two-year-old season with a win in the Hollywood Prevue. Trainer Eoin Harty is taking the blinkers off after the addition of blinkers in the San Felipe had American Lion anxious in the early going, which seemed to weaken him in the lane. American Lion finished just ahead of Stephen’s Got Hope in the San Felipe and Stephen’s Got Hope had the exact opposite trip as American Lion. He was last early, then made an encouraging middle move while very wide on the far turn, only to level off in the lane late. Dave In Dixie was a one-paced sixth in the San Felipe and is a curious puzzle here: he’s kept top company in California but hasn’t yet had the breakthrough performance needed to compete at this high level. Rounding out the Californian quartet is Boulder Creek, who enters off a very green fifth-place finish in the Sham Stakes, having never switched leads and having lugged in repeatedly in the final eighth.

Two starters from the Gotham will give the Illinois Derby a try. New York-bred Yawanna Twist, off a deceptively solid second effort in the Gotham, sports just a pair of works on Aqueduct’s inner track in preparation for trainer Rick Dutrow. The other entrant from the Gotham is Turf Melody, who will be making this his tenth different racetrack in as many starts.

Completing the field is Tampa shipper Game Ball, who’s won two straight, the last a first level allowance race on March 5th at Tampa.

  – Chris Rossi, @o_crunk

Further Reading:

  Illinois Derby – Wikipedia

Considered the most important stepping stone to the Kentucky Derby in California, the Santa Anita Derby boasts springboarding 18 wins in classic races since its inception in 1935, including seven Kentucky Derby winners, seven Preakness winners and four Belmont winners. The 11th Triple Crown winner, Affirmed, used the Santa Anita Derby as his launching pad, as did Derby winners Sunday Silence (1989), Winning Colors (1988), Majestic Prince (1969), Lucky Debonair (1965), Determine (1954) and Hill Gail (1952). Despite the 20-year dry spell for Derby winners, last year’s Santa Anita Derby winner, Pioneerof the Nile (not a typo), ran a solid second to Mine That Bird in the Kentucky Derby.

This year’s field is a who’s who of solid California contenders, headed by two-year-old champion and Rebel Stakes winner Lookin at Lucky. As one of the two potential favorites for the Derby, all eyes will be on him. Sidney’s Candy, winner of the San Vicente and San Felipe, is second choice in the morning line. He’s been working well and wouldn’t be a surprise to anyone, especially as he seems likely to control the pace. Robert B. Lewis winner Caracortado also figures prominently. His third place finish last out in the San Felipe was no disgrace as he ran widest of all and was closing well. Other entrants include Sham winner Alphie’s Bet, Cardiff Giant, Posse Power, Setsuko, Skipshot, Thomas Baines and Who’s up.

In the quest for earnings, Lookin at Lucky is at the top of the list, but everyone else desperately needs to be in the money if they hope to make it in the gate. The winner will bank $450,000, while the second and third place finishers will get $150,000 and $90,000 respectively. Will the Santa Anita Derby break its 20-year dry spell? Stay tuned!

  – Dana Byerly, Green but Game

Further Reading:

  Santa Anita Derby – Wikipedia

Lost training time cost Jody Slew, who was no factor in an exciting blanket finish in the Fair Grounds Oaks. Post-time favorite Quiet Temper passed 13-1 longshot Champagne d’Oro at the wire for the win, while last-out maiden winner Seeking the Title and 56-1 longshot Sheer Beauty dead heated for third-place. Mambo Fever couldn’t keep pace, finishing fifth ahead of Ailalea and Jody Slew. As suspected, neither Camille’s Appeal nor Visavis could run the distance and finished well back.

In my preview, I liked both Champagne d’Oro and Seeking the Title, the former based on performance since switching from synthetic to dirt, and the latter on performance and breeding. However, it was shocking to see Sheer Beauty go postward at such long odds, and an astute handicapper would jump in on her at that point. In hindsight (which, of course, is always 20/20), chalk up her poor Tiffany Lass performance to a new jockey using her up too early; coming back with regular rider James Graham running off-pace to win an easier stakes race at Delta Downs helped her regain confidence, and he had her under stout restraint again in this race, allowing for a burst of late speed. It adds a whole new dimension to her, as her breeding already indicates stamina.

Connections of the top four finishers have all indicated they will continue on to the April 30 Kentucky Oaks, as may Jody Slew.

Full Results and Replay

  – Valerie Grash, Foolish Pleasure

Further Reading:

  Fair Grounds Oaks – Wikipedia Entry

Trailing the field into the stretch, 8-5 favorite Musir rallied late to win the UAE Derby by 1 3/4 lengths in a final time of 1:57.44. The fast-closing Australian-bred was forced to wend his way through traffic, then dive through a gap on the rail to take the lead from stablemate Raihana, who finished second. Mendip, the 9-5 second favorite, finished third by three lengths.

Musir will ship to Australia, trainer David Payne told the Herald Sun, and could start in the Cox Plate. Mendip, who briefly took the lead approximately 400 meters from the finish and gamely dueled with Raihana for command before dropping back, earned $200,000 for his effort, almost certainly enough for a stall in the Kentucky Derby starting gate.

Full Results and Replay

  – Jessica Chapel, Railbird

Trainer Mike Maker was correct – Dean’s Kitten loved the surface and distance of the Lane’s End Stakes. He rolled to a 2 1/2 length victory over Northern Giant, with favored Connemara working hard for third place. While the argument can be made that Connemara did not handle the Polytrack well, the point is now academic – in the absence of many defections, he now lacks the graded stakes earnings necessary to make the Kentucky Derby field. Todd Pletcher’s other horse in the race, Doubles Partner, showed even less, finishing second to last – just ahead of early pacesetter Ranger Heartley.

Dean’s Kitten, meanwhile, is headed for Louisville; while his only previous start on dirt was a disappointing one, his connections are hoping that the Ramsey homebred may turn out to be the horse that finally gets them a Derby win. His effort in the Lane’s End was encouraging, in that regard – he tracked the leaders, stayed out of trouble and then easily took the lead – but whether he can translate that effort onto the dirt at Churchill Downs remains to be seen.

Full Results and Replay

  – Lisa Grimm, Superfectablog

Further Reading:

  Lane’s End Stakes – Wikipedia Entry

Trainer Todd Pletcher added yet another Derby contender to his already long list with surprise winner Mission Impazible. The pace scenario was a little different than anticipated, but was indeed a bit faster than the Risen Star. Out of the gate, A Little Warm, Discreetly Mine, Mission Impazible, Backtrack and Drosselmeyer were relatively tightly bunched in the front of the pack with A Little Warm taking the lead. The eventual winner sat comfortably behind the leader, who was closely tracked by Risen Star winner Discreetly Mine and Backtrack.

Coming to the stretch, it was a wide open affair with no one pulling away. Stretch-running Ron the Greek commenced a run but seemed to hit a bit of traffic and wasn’t able to rally once he got clear. While A Little Warm and Discreetly Mine battled down the lane, Mission Impazible found another gear and closed to win by 1 1/4 lengths.

Winning jockey Rajiv Maragh is also the rider of Odysseus, who is likely to make his next start in the Arkansas Derby or Blue Grass Stakes. If Odysseus performs well, the talented young rider might have a decision to make if both mounts make it to gate on the Derby day.

Full Results and Replay

  – Dana Byerly, Green but Game

Further Reading:

  Louisiana Derby – Wikipedia Entry

Website

Previously undefeated Conveyance enjoyed easy early fractions, but when lightly raced Endorsement made his move, it was no contest as the well bred son of Distorted Humor finished home strong to win by three lengths in near track-record time. Tempted to Tapit held on for third against a fast closing Fog Alert; Nacho Friend failed to last after being on pace early, finishing fifth, just ahead of local entry and Borderland Derby winner Storming Saint. As expected, the rest of the field was far behind.

Because of differences in dirt track surfaces, it’s difficult to make wholesale declarations, but Endorsement’s final time (1:48.46), accomplished with relative ease, was by far better than the other major 3-year-old races this past weekend by nearly two full seconds. His ability to run on pace and close with a strong kick is a big positive, and his breeding indicates that the Kentucky Derby distance should not be a problem for him. If Endorsement were to go on and win the Run for the Roses, Shannon Ritter would become the first woman ever to train a Derby winner.

Full Results and Replay

  – Valerie Grash, Foolish Pleasure

Further Reading:

  Sunland Derby – Wikipedia Entry