Honor Marie will point to next month’s Grade 3, $300,000 Kentucky Cup Classic at Turfway Park after finishing full of run in a 4 1/2-length victory in the Dust Commander Stakes at the Florence, Ky., track last Saturday night.
“That’s 100 percent the target now,” trainer Whit Beckman said Monday. “If he didn’t run well there, we were going to Virginia, but now that he ran well, we’re definitely going to run back there.”
This was the third career stakes win for Honor Marie. The 5-year-old gelding first came on the scene winning the Grade 2 Kentucky Jockey Club as a juvenile at Churchill Downs. That, plus a runner-up effort in the Grade 2 Louisiana Derby, put him on the 2024 Triple Crown trail, and he finished eighth in the Kentucky Derby and fourth in the Belmont Stakes. As a 4-year-old last year, Honor Marie won the Isaac Murphy Marathon Overnight Stakes, going 1 1/2 miles at Churchill.
All of Honor Marie’s previous starts came on dirt, but this winter, the late-running gelding, who is out of the graded stakes-placed turf mare Dame Marie, is based at Turfway. In his first try on the Tapeta, he finished fifth, improving position late, in the 1 1/4-mile Boone County Stakes in December. He was entered back against allowance company, but the race was ultimately canceled due to a spate of frigid winter weather. The start in the Dust Commander at 1 1/16 miles “kind of came out of necessity,” Beckman said.
Honor Marie was last after the opening quarter-mile, but heavy favorite Encino, who ultimately faded to eighth, set a pressured pace, giving the late-runner a good setup for a wide rally.
“Anytime I run this horse a mile, mile and a sixteenth, I think it’s too short, but we had a good pace setup,” Beckman said.
Honor Marie earned a Beyer Speed Figure of 97 in the Dust Commander – a career high, edging the 96 he posted in the Louisiana Derby nearly two years ago.
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