Brad Cox trained champion Monomoy Girl to win the 2018 Kentucky Oaks. Last weekend at Saratoga, the Cox-trained Good Cheer, who won this year’s Oaks, lost for the first time in eight career starts, finishing a flat fifth as the 3-10 favorite in the Acorn Stakes. One week later, the Cox-trained filly who went into this past winter the Oaks favorite, Immersive, resumes her career Saturday following a half-year layoff in the Monomoy Girl Stakes at Churchill Downs.
The circumstances are heavily “Coxified” – but not as heavy as Immersive’s favoritism in the $175,000 Monomoy Girl.
Immersive, whose third Grade 1 win last season came in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, is an undefeated champion returning in a listed stakes, and one of the five horses who had a small upset chance won’t be starting. Trainer Wesley Ward said he entered speedy Running Away “just to take a look” and didn’t like what he saw. Running Away will be scratched, leaving no more than four fillies to take on Immersive.
Take Charge Milady easily is the best among them. Her second-place finish behind Acorn winner La Cara in the Grade 1 Ashland at Keeneland in April puts her within hailing distance of the odds-on favorite, and trainer Kenny McPeek said Take Charge Milady failed to handle a wet, sealed racing surface finishing 12th on May 2 in the Oaks. Take Charge Milady went into the Oaks fighting a quarter crack that has since resolved.
“My filly’s going to have to run a big race. Her Ashland run showed she’s got a lot of talent,” McPeek said. “This looked like a good spot for her when they laid it out.”
That is, before Cox announced Immersive would return to racing in the Monomoy Girl.
Immersive didn’t get as far as posting a timed workout this winter when connections announced she was suffering from bone bruising that would cost the filly her spring campaign. Cox also said all along that he didn’t believe Immersive would take a huge amount of training to get back to race fitness upon her return, and her workout pattern suggests that has been the case.
Immersive hit the work tab for the first time since October on the morning of the Oaks, breezing three furlongs May 2. She had another three-furlong work, a pair of half-mile drills, a five-furlong breeze, and one final half mile, and apparently is good to go. There’s workout video from two of those breezes, half-miles on May 16 and June 8, both solo drills, both encouraging enough.
Regular rider Manny Franco comes in from New York to take the call on Immersive, a Godolphin homebred by Nyquist out of Gap Year, by Bernardini. The horses behind Immersive in her trio of Grade 1s – the Spinaway and the Alcibiades preceding the Breeders’ Cup – have not turned out to be an especially fast bunch, but that holds true for this entire crop, and Immersive did win the BC Juvenile Fillies by more than four lengths. She should start her 3-year-old season the same way she ended her 2-year-old campaign: With an easy victory.
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