When Be Your Best finished a well-beaten third Saturday at Saratoga after running out to a big lead in the Flower Bowl Stakes, her trainer, Saffie Joseph Jr., praised the way the mare was ridden. For her best chance, Be Your Best needed to press her advantage as the race’s lone speed horse. Well, here we go again. The Joseph-trained No Mo Candy can control the pace Thursday at Kentucky Downs in the $500,000 One Dreamer Stakes. And it might behoove jockey Irad Ortiz Jr. to let the filly rock and roll.
Ortiz did take off his mounts Monday at Saratoga after coming off Mindframe in the Jockey Club Gold Cup on Sunday. Doctors on Sunday night cleared Ortiz to ride, and perhaps he’ll be ready Thursday.
No Mo Candy makes her Kentucky Downs debut with Joseph still looking to make a dent this Kentucky Downs meet. After Sunday’s action, his runners the first three cards had gone 13-0-0-1.
Nine were entered in the One Dreamer, a mile and 70-yard race for older fillies and mares who haven’t won a stakes race during 2025.
No Mo Candy won her last three starts at age 3, capped by a pace-pressing score in the Grade 3 Pebbles, and she shows improving form lines through three 2025 starts. Ineffective in the Mint Julep in her season’s debut, No Mo Candy finished a close fourth in the Matchmaker at Monmouth Park on July 19 and a better third Aug. 8 in the Ballston Spa at Saratoga.
The Matchmaker looks like a lesson in how not to deploy No Mo Candy’s speed. She was held up on the lead through a half in a glacial 50.09, then outkicked by three rivals through the final furlong.
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Grayosh was one of them, posting the Matchmaker’s fastest last furlong, 11.74, while passing No Mo Candy by one length and finishing third by a neck. Unraced since, the diminutive Grayosh, who last summer defeated divisional leader She Feels Pretty, is not much of a work horse on dirt, but trainer Chad Brown got five drills into her during August, a strong sign that Grayosh comes to her Kentucky Downs debut in top form.
The race, to be fair, looks wide open. Adrasteia merits longshot status, but a case can be made for the other eight.
Sparkle Blue might have lost a step this year at age 6, but two summers ago finished a strong second in the Ladies Turf at Kentucky Downs.
Buttercream Babe won her debut over the course and raced at a 6 1/2-furlong distance too short for her in the Music City Stakes last Kentucky Downs meet.
Waves of Mischief, probably running farther than her best, managed a solid second last season in the Dueling Grounds Oaks.
Vive Veuve has stylishly captured consecutive allowance races, and her third in the 2024 Music City definitely came at a trip well short of ideal.
Watchtower got in a nice comeback run closing into a slow pace for third in the Yellow Ribbon at Santa Anita, but she would be hurt by a lack of pace Thursday.
Pharoah’s Wine enters in good form and in late May defeated Vive Veuve, but her maiden victory in 2023 marks trainer Dale Romans’s only Kentucky Downs winner the last five years.
No Mo Candy just might be the winner if she, like her stablemate last weekend, is allowed to make full use of her speed.
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