On class alone, Where’s My Ring looms large in the $250,000 Lady Jacqueline Stakes on Saturday at Thistledown. A Grade 3 winner last year, she is Grade 1-placed two starts back against no less a foe than reigning Horse of the Year Thorpedo Anna.
But despite all that, Where’s My Ring appears vulnerable at the moment, coming off a nondescript effort in her first outing for a new barn. If she does not bounce back to her prior form, it leaves an opening – perhaps for Ohio-bred Candlelight Hours to be a hometown hero.
The Lady Jacqueline, a 1 1/8-mile race for open fillies and mares, is one of four stakes supporting the Grade 3, $500,000 Ohio Derby on Saturday’s richest card of the season at Thistledown, along with three $75,000 stakes for Ohio-bred or Ohio-accredited runners.
Where’s My Ring finished second in the Grade 3 Santa Ysabel before winning the Grade 3 Gazelle last spring at Aqueduct. She was 10th in the Kentucky Oaks and unplaced in her two additional outings to end 2024.
This year, Where’s My Ring returned from an extended freshening to finish third in an allowance at Oaklawn Park, then returned to the winner’s circle there, earning an eye-catching 103 Beyer Speed Figure. That set her up for a return to stakes company, and she finished third in the Grade 1 Apple Blossom at Oaklawn behind champion Thorpedo Anna and the multimillionaire Free Like a Girl.
Where’s My Ring was subsequently transferred from trainer Val Brinkerhoff to Peter Miller. In her first start for the new barn, in the Grade 3 Shawnee on May 31 at Churchill Downs, she raced in third early but then faded to sixth.
Candlelight Hours, a 6-year-old homebred for Elkhorn Oaks trained by James Jackson, has been named an Ohio-bred divisional champion multiple times. She owns six career stakes victories in her home state, including the 2021 Best of Ohio John W. Galbreath Memorial for 2-year-old fillies on the fall showcase program and the 2023 Best of Ohio Distaff.
The Lady Jacqueline will be Candlelight Hours’s third start off about a nine-month layoff. She returned to the races with a troubled trip in a key allowance race, in which the top two were subsequent winners. Candlelight Hours was squeezed back at the three-eighths pole, crossed the wire sixth, and was elevated to fifth on a disqualification. She then came back to win her next outing at the allowance level.
Although those were both sprints, Candlelight Hours has won multiple times at this nine-furlong distance. She opted for the Lady Jacqueline over the $75,000 Dr. T.F. Classen Memorial, a six-furlong race for Ohio-accredited fillies and mares.
In Just My Heels also comes to the Lady Jacqueline off the Shawnee, in which she was seventh behind Where’s My Ring. Prior to that, she placed in a pair of stakes at Oaklawn. Peignoir was stakes-placed at Oaklawn and Tampa earlier this year and most recently finished fourth in the Allaire duPont Distaff at Pimlico.
◗ Defending winner Lofty Cowtown comes back to the aforementioned Classen Memorial off a win in a claiming race in March. She sprang a $36.20 upset in last year’s edition over Queenofthebuckeye and Salute the Kid, both of whom also return for Saturday’s running.
Authoritarian Girl, a stakes winner of the 2023 Emerald Necklace, has won four of her last five outings, all at the allowance or claiming level. She returns to stakes company off a win over Lemon Mousse and Kiss Valentina, both in this lineup.
◗ The $75,000 George Lewis Memorial, a 1 1/16-mile race for Ohio-accredited runners age 3 and up, also matches some familiar foes. Shadowy, Villian, and Lust for Life made up the trifecta in the six-furlong Michael F. Rowland Memorial on May 3.
Shadowy and Villian, both of whom run for prominent Ohio breeder and trainer Tim Hamm, appeared in the first Best of Ohio program on June 6 at Belterra Park and, with no two-turn option on the dirt, took different paths. Villian finished second in the Sydney Gendelman Stakes going two turns on turf, and he now gets back to a surface on which he is a stakes winner at two turns. Meanwhile, Shadowy was 10th against a deep field on the Babst/Palacios Memorial sprinting. He has run creditably at two turns on dirt.
◗ Another rematch rounds out the stakes action in the $75,000 Cleveland Gold Cup for Ohio-bred 3-year-olds. Superwolf, Ed’s Reward, and Fortissimo made up the trifecta in the Best of Ohio Juvenile at 1 1/16 miles on dirt last fall. Fortissimo, who had come in undefeated for Hamm, had done enough to be named the Buckeye State’s champion juvenile. Fortissimo has been second in two stakes to start this year but is likely coming back to his preferred trip, as he gets to go 1 1/8 miles on dirt. He started his season finishing second in the Tall Stack Stakes sprinting and was again second in the Best of Ohio Green Carpet going 1 1/16 miles on turf earlier this month.
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