A long list of entries into the Grade 2, $400,000 Giant’s Causeway Stakes on Sunday at Keeneland spells trouble for at least one potentially key player. The race’s short distance could compromise the chances of another.
The Giant’s Causeway, carded for 5 1/2 furlongs on turf and open to older fillies and mares, broke the entry box. Sixteen horses appear in the past performance pages, but only a dozen can start, and the 3-1 morning-line favorite, Shining Star, is stuck on the also-eligible list. She is, however, the first also-eligible, and the high rate of scratches in Kentucky gives connections hope that Shining Star will make the field.
“Twelve horses, I look at it as almost guaranteed,” trainer Brad Cox said Friday. “We’re preparing her to run.”
Love Cervere, winner of half her eight grass races, ships from Florida to make her 4-year-old bow for trainer Miguel Clement. Talented and progressive, Love Cervere never has put a wrong hoof forward in one-turn turf races, but her three stakes wins during a strong 2025 campaign came in races at six or 6 1/2 furlongs.
“I’m not sure, to be honest,” Clement said, asked if Love Cervere could get home at a distance as short as 5 1/2 furlongs. “But at the end of the day she needs to get going and start somewhere.”
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Shining Star already has gotten going this year – and hardly could be going stronger.
None of the other 15 Giant’s Causeway horses have posted a Beyer Speed Figure anywhere near the 103 Shining Star earned capturing the Mardi Gras Stakes on Feb. 17 at Fair Grounds – and that performance did not come out of nowhere.
Shining Star, a 5-year-old bred in Chile on Southern Hemisphere time by her owner, Sumaya Stables, began her career as a Chilean dirt horse. She won her first four, flopped going 1 1/4 miles in Group 1 competition in November 2024, and wound up the following spring in California. She ran poorly there in a dirt-sprint allowance before moving east into the Cox barn.
“She kind of showed up with a couple others with just okay form that have not panned out to be stake winners like she has,” Cox said. “She’s had to prove it to us.”
She’s proved it. Shining Star, making her turf debut last October in Indiana, overwhelmed 11 first-level allowance foes with a 7 1/2-length victory. She stepped up a rung on the class ladder and whipped Fair Grounds rivals in January, then took no prisoners in the Mardi Gras, winning by 4 1/4 lengths under regular rider Jose Ortiz. A wide draw should pose little impediment for Shining Star, who has the speed to lead but the brain to stalk.
“She breezed really good on the grass at Keeneland – finished up well, looks great. She seems to be getting better,” Cox said.
Three capable route horses – Movin’ On Up, Charlene’s Dream, and In Our Time – all cut back from a series of two-turn races. Charlene’s Dream, unraced since August, last season won the Gallorette over 1 1/16 miles and the Beverly D. at 1 3/16 miles, but early in her career went 3-2-1-0 in Northern California synthetic sprints.
Movin’ On Up hasn’t sprinted since September 2023, though her Saffie Joseph Jr.-trained stablemate In Our Time flashed sprint capability in a pair of races last summer.
Gratefully enters the Giant’s Causeway unbeaten in five starts, the last three on turf. She has shipped from California for trainer Robert Falcone Jr., who never has run a stakes horse at Keeneland. Gratefully, who has speed, made her stakes debut Feb. 21 in the restricted Wishing Well at Santa Anita. She won by a head, though the horse she nipped, Saratoga Special, ran at least as well while making her North American debut.
Saratoga Special also has shipped from California and worked April 7 over the Keeneland turf. But she might not get to race over it Sunday, buried as the third also-eligible in an overflow renewal of the Giant’s Causeway.
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