The closing-day feature of Ellis Park’s summer 2025 meeting has the feel of a race that came up four days before opening day of the 2025 Kentucky Downs meet.
The Ellis Park Turf, carded for older fillies and mares at 1 1/16 miles on grass, offers a purse of $150,000. That is $20,000 less than a maiden race at all-turf Kentucky Downs. And this coming Saturday, Aug. 30, Kentucky Downs cards a race in the same division, the Ladies Turf, worth $2 million.
No wonder, then, that the Ellis Park Turf drew a nondescript field of eight. Everland, the morning-line 7-5 favorite, has made five starts on turf, accumulating a fourth-place finish and four sixth-place finishes. That sort of record should send bettors scrambling to play against her at anything close to the projected odds.
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Everland fits on figures. Her turf races have yielded Beyer Speed Figures in the 80s, including her most recent grass outing June 29 in the Anchorage Overnight at Churchill Downs, where she got an 82. That race’s winner, Pin Up Betty, exited a victory in the Grade 3 Mint Julep, while Anchorage fifth-place finisher Charlene’s Dream returned to win the Grade 2 Beverly D. Nonetheless, Everland, as she did in her other grass races, didn’t do much more than run along with other beaten rivals, and her entry in the Ellis Park Turf gives off vibes of an afterthought. She raced just two weeks ago, checking in a tepid fifth on dirt in the Groupie Doll.
Her trainer, Eric Foster, has a second entrant, Maxisuperfly, who hasn’t raced since October and whose peak performance came the better part of 16 months ago.
Trainer Brendan Walsh runs Hope Mission, another short price on the morning line, 2-1, who lacks appeal at anything like those odds. Hope Mission got a perfect pressing trip clearing the maiden ranks earlier this year at Fair Grounds while making her turf debut, and, like Everland, looks like she’s just gone through the motions in three subsequent starts, all on grass.
Next Up, 10-1 on the morning line, holds more appeal at her expected price, while Poppy the Princess, 8-1 on the line, stands as the top selection.
Next Up, claimed out of her career debut and only a fifth-time starter, returned from a two-month layoff on July 26 and cleared her first allowance condition while making her turf debut over the Ellis Park course. Victory came after a nice upper stretch rally between horses, and she won by three-quarters of a length while not being hard-ridden to the wire.
Poppy the Princess never gets bet. She won her career debut last summer in an Ellis turf route at odds of 33-1, then was second in a first-level Keeneland turf-route allowance at 17-1. A 5-1 off-turf winner two back at Churchill, Poppy the Princess scored yet another off-turf allowance win last out at Ellis, and this filly will perform at least as well on turf as she did over sloppy tracks in those two recent wins.
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