SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - The five-day Belmont Stakes Festival really kicks into high gear on Friday with the first of two consecutive 14-race programs at Saratoga. The card includes six graded stakes topped by the Grade 1 Acorn for 3-year-old fillies that features the local debut of the undefeated Kentucky Oaks winner Good Cheer.
First post on Friday is 11:40 a.m.
Good Cheer will enter the one-mile, one-furlong Acorn perfect and virtually unchallenged in seven career starts. Her impeccable resume’ includes victories earlier this season in the Grade 2 Rachel Alexandra and the Fair Ground Oaks as a prelude to her late-running, 2 1/4-length triumph over Drexel Hill at Churchill Downs in the prestigious Kentucky Oaks.
Trainer Michael McCarthy, whose Preakness winner Journalism has yet to be confirmed a definite starter in the Belmont Stakes, will hope to jump-start his weekend by sending out Move Forward in the Acorn. Move Forward will be stretching out around two turns after capturing the seven-furlong, Grade 2 Eight Belles in her last start.
The Acorn, which also lured Scottish Lassie, La Cara, Shred the Gnar, Bless the Broken and Quickick, is the second of four Grade 1 races for fillies and mares on the card along with the Ogden Phipps, New York and Just a Game.
The nine-furlong Ogden Phipps again features the Chad Brown-trained duo of Raging Sea, winner of the Grade 1 La Troienne earlier this month at Churchill Downs, and her archrival and stablemate Randomized, last year’s Phipps winner, who was a tiring third beaten less than a length after setting the pace to midstretch in the La Troienne.
The Brown pair will take on a field that includes Grade 1 winners Leslie’s Rose and Candied, both from the barn of trainer Todd Pletcher, along with Dorth Vader, Dazzling Move and Tarifa.
The 1 3/16-mile New York drew a field of eight, surprisingly none of whom are trained by Chad Brown, who has won this event a record five times. Instead, it will be the Cherie DeVaux-trained She Feels Pretty, a three-time Grade 1 winner, who figures to go postward an overwhelming favorite coming off an outstanding 2025 debut, a track-record-setting victory in the Grade 3 Modesty when facing older horses for the first time five weeks ago at Churchill Downs.
Trainer Graham Motion will counter She Feels Pretty with Gimme a Nother and Beach Bomb, both Group 1 winners in their native South Africa. Forever After All, Immensitude, Miwa, Edict and Bellezza have also been entered.
Brown will be well represented in the one-mile Just a Game, an event he’s dominated with seven victories over the last eight years, including each of the last three renewals. The race features a rematch between Brown’s Excellent Truth and British invader Choisya, who came out a half-length best over Excellent Truth following an eventful stretch run when the two European-bred mares met for the first time this spring in the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley at Keeneland.
Brown will also be represented in the Just a Game by Dynamic Pricing and Segesta among a near-full field of 11 older fillies and mares that includes Kehoe Beach, who finished a close third in the Jenny Wiley, Special Wan, Simply in Front, Do Gooder, A Lilac Rolla, Heredia and Sacred Wish.
The Grade 2 Bed O' Roses, going seven furlongs on the main track, and the grueling Grade 2 Belmont Gold Cup to be decided at two miles on the grass, round out the stakes on Friday’s card.
Grade 1 winner Ways and Means, off her third-place finish making her 2025 debut in the Derby City Distaff, should be favored against six other fillies and mares in the Bed O' Roses.
The Gold Cup drew a familiar field of 10 long-winded turf specialists along with a trio of main track entrants. Limited Liability, who finished third, beaten just a neck, in this event a year ago is among the major players along with Anglophile, Grand Sonata, the red-hot European invader Flatten the Curve and La Mehana, the lone filly among the group.
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