Final-time speed figures that can’t account for pace sometimes don’t work so well in turf races, which can unfold at a tempo so slow that no matter how fast a horse finishes, the final time and, thus, the figure, will suffer.
Mission of Joy won a high-end allowance race on April 25 at Churchill Downs by one length. The 86 Beyer Speed Figure that performance produced lands somewhere around first-level allowance class on a major circuit, a far cry from the high 90s Mission of Joy has hit on several occasions, including twice last summer.
Mission of Joy ended her 2024 campaign with decidedly subpar showings at Kentucky Downs and Woodbine, earning figures of 79 and 77. Does the Churchill figure mean Mission of Joy this summer will be more like the horse she was at the end of her 2024 campaign, and that she’s a vulnerable favorite Sunday at Monmouth Park in the $100,000 Miss Liberty Stakes?
Probably not.
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Held near the back of a five-horse field down the backstretch and into the far turn in her Churchill win, Mission of Joy sat a few lengths behind a half-mile split of 49.81, very slow for a one-mile contest. She moved up a length or so as six furlongs went in 1:13.83, then threw down a 22.15-second final quarter-mile. Mission of Joy was urged along at the furlong pole, then hand-ridden the last 50 yards or so after hitting the front. The comparison’s not perfect, but no older horse in the graded grass routes at Churchill on May 2 and May 3 – the Modesty, the Distaff Turf Mile, and the Turf Classic – produced as fast a finish.
Mission of Joy, without the best of trips, came home a strong third last June in the Grade 1 Just a Game at Saratoga, but trainer Graham Motion wondered if he’d asked Mission of Joy for too much too soon coming back five weeks later in the Grade 1 Diana. Mission of Joy finished sixth there before losing her edge the last two races of her form cycle.
Motion this year takes a much different approach, going from the allowance race, where the mare was a 3-5 shot, into the ungraded Miss Liberty, which Mission of Joy will win if she’s the same horse she was on this date last year. Joe Bravo rides for the first time.
Damaso and Joyful Lass should provide the pace Sunday, while Mohawk Trail, in from Kentucky for trainer Kelsey Danner, and a pair of Chad Brown-trained fillies ought to offer the stiffest competition.
Brown entered Fun With Flags, who hasn’t won since March 2024 in France, and Spaliday, who won the $100,000 Boiling Springs for 3-year-old fillies last summer in her only Monmouth appearance.
Fun With Flags won three of four overseas and was Group 3-placed before winding up in America, but all her French racing came over courses rated soft or heavy, and the filly has showed zero spark since being imported.
Spaliday ended her 2024 campaign winning the Grade 2 Sands Point but hasn’t come close to that form in two races this year, albeit with compromising trips both times. She fell too far behind a modest pace in the Hillsborough at Tampa Bay Downs in March, and on May 4 made a three-wide, no-cover move into a strong pace leaving the clubhouse turn and going onto the backstretch in the Beaugay at Aqueduct.
Spaliday can do better in the Miss Liberty. So can Mission of Joy.
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