The $275,000 Aristides Stakes is a Grade 3 race that has attracted a couple of entrants with Grade 1 ambitions.
Five-year-old Skelly never has won a Grade 1, in great part because there exist in America so few of them for older horses over six furlongs. But he absolutely has Grade 1 credentials: 12 wins from 21 starts, almost $2 million in earnings, Beyer Speed Figures as high as any horse around.
Four-year-old World Record’s peak came last summer at Saratoga in the Grade 2 Amsterdam, which he won so powerfully that he probably bounced one month later, fading to sixth in the Grade 1 Allen Jerkens over a seven-furlong trip beyond his best. Rodolphe Brisset, who trains World Record for WinStar Farm and BBN Racing, wants to keep World Record at six furlongs and has two Grade 1 goals, both at Del Mar: the Bing Crosby in late July and the Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
Skelly made the Breeders’ Cup last fall but came to Del Mar after a long campaign that included a trip to Saudi Arabia and ran far below his best, a flat 10th. There’s been nothing flat about his two races this year, front-running stakes romps at Oaklawn Park, where Skelly has 10 wins from 10 starts. At Churchill, he’s 4-1-2-0, the win a maiden race in 2022.
“It’s a concern. He’s a six-furlong horse. Churchill has such a long run-up, it’s considerably longer than six furlongs,” said trainer Steve Asmussen.
Skelly abides no tactical strategizing. He wants to run as fast as he can whenever he sets foot on the racetrack.
“He’s very strong in every sense of the word, physically and in his demeanor,” Asmussen said.
World Record possesses great speed, though he’s less a force of nature than Skelly. Champlin also brings serious early foot to the Aristides and has drawn the rail. If he goes forward and can hook Skelly, World Record and Flavien Prat could fall into a perfect trip. World Record sharply won a May 1 third-level Churchill allowance, his first start since Nov. 25. He earned a 100 Beyer and can do better.
“I think we got him a couple of lengths superior now,” Brisset said. “His last two works were very impressive. At every pole, I was saying to the rider, ‘Slow down, slow down,’ but he was doing it easily. And he has shown us he likes the four weeks between races.”
Giant Mischief could post an upset if the pace boils over. Typically a stalker, he somehow wound up leading the Grade 1 Churchill Downs Stakes on Derby Day, fading to ninth in a race dominated by closers and contested over a sloppy track, which Giant Mischief doesn’t seem to handle.
He probably also can’t handle the likes of Skelly and World Record.
Shawnee Stakes
Her name is Gin Gin, not simply Gin, and the primary question regarding the Grade 3, $275,000 Shawnee Stakes is whether the filly’s breakout performance last month proves, like her name, repeatable.
Making her second start in about a year, her first in three months, and her first for trainer Brendan Walsh, Gin Gin went off at nearly 40-1 in the Doubledogdare Stakes at Keeneland – and won like a 4-5 shot.
She sat second in the early and middle stages, took over the lead into the far turn, and never looked back, winning that Grade 3 dirt route by 5 1/4 lengths.
Gin Gin, a Calumet Farm homebred by Hightail, came into the Doubledogdare still second-level-allowance eligible and with a career-best 76 Beyer. She came out of it with a 96 Beyer, a Grade 1-level number in today’s older-female dirt-route division.
Gin Gin, Jose Ortiz with a return call, has posted four works since the Doubledogdare. Three have been at Keeneland, but her most recent came May 24 at Churchill, where Gin Gin clocked 49 seconds for a half-mile, the best-looking part of her drill on the gallop-out around the clubhouse turn.
Gin Gin wins the 1 1/16-mile Shawnee if she runs back to her last race. If not – chaos.
The morning line has Where’s My Ring favored at 5-2, which seems too low. The mare, making her first start for trainer Peter Miller, earned a 103 Beyer facing soft company two back, and that’s a radical outlier in her speed-figure history. Hoosier Philly has settled in as a listed stakes-level performer. Free Like a Girl has gone far beyond her best. Alpine Princess seems like trainer Brad Cox’s “C” Team.
Royal Spa might be the now horse. Her last two figures, both in one-turn Maryland races, are the highest of her career, and Brisset said Royal Spa has never turned in breezes like her last two. Flavien Prat picks up the mount, and the horse’s earlier two-turn failures came under challenging circumstances.
“She didn’t let them past even after the wire last time. The jockey said he couldn’t get her pulled up,” Brisset said.
Is Royal Spa the right answer if Gin Gin can’t repeat her Doubledogdare? Maybe. Maybe.
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