At 10-1, Volleyballprincess won the Ruthless Stakes by 10 lengths. She will not be getting the same setup Saturday in the $200,000 Busher Invitational.
Volleyballprincess meets more horses, better horses, and horses quicker out of the gate in the Busher, a one-turn mile that’s part of Churchill Downs’s Road to the Kentucky Oaks. The Busher winner earns 50 Oaks qualifying points, likely enough to make the 14-runner field.
Will any of these 3-year-old fillies actually turn out to be qualified Oaks contenders? Not yet, but not impossible.
Only one Busher entrant among eight set to run (Nilo’s Rose will be scratched), Drexel Hill, has earned a Beyer Speed Figure as high as 80, though Volleyballprincess got to a 77 in her Ruthless.
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Only four others ran in the Feb. 1 Ruthless. Volleyballprincess made an easy lead, and the race’s runner-up, Volleyballprincess’s Louis Linder-trained stablemate Ourdaydreaminggirl, returned with a tame fourth at odds of 21-1 last weekend in Maryland.
While Drexel Hill ships in from Turfway Park, she wintered at Fair Grounds. Her owner, Legion Racing, sent her to trainer Whit Beckman for a dirt campaign after Drexel Hill raced last summer and fall over the Tapeta surface at Woodbine.
On the surface, her dirt debut, a fifth in the Untapable, did not look like much, but Drexel Hill’s jockey told Beckman his mount steadily pulled toward the rail during the race’s middle stages, and Beckman noted the deep-stretch spark Drexel Hill showed. Racing for the first time in blinkers in the Silverbulletday, Drexel Hill had surprising early speed, tracking the pace of her very talented stablemate Simply Joking before settling for an improved third. Jockey Ben Curtis has a return call; the blinkers do not.
“She was a tick too aggressive early. She ran good, but we felt like if she was slightly more rateable early, she’d have finished closer,” Beckman said.
Liam in the Dust also ships from Kentucky but hasn’t started since Dec. 7, when she finished a fading third against stronger competition than this in the 1 1/8-mile Demoiselle. Liam in the Dust earned a career-best 77 Beyer in the Demoiselle but might prove better over shorter trips. Trainer Rodolphe Brisset said he’s pleased having Liam in the Dust back at one mile. She appears the likely pacesetter from the rail under Luan Machado.
Sharp Smile and Ramify finished third and fourth, respectively, in the nine-furlong Busanda, but both of them, coming from off the pace, might have raced against the Aqueduct track profile Jan. 18. Front-runners won seven of nine races, and running positions never changed throughout the six-horse Busanda.
She’s Fascinating didn’t particularly catch the eye but did notch a third-start 8 1/4-length maiden mile score Jan. 23 at Aqueduct.
Tom Fool, Stymie
Winnin’onweekends and Top Gunner each produced a “Where did that come from?” performance in their most recent start. Bettors must judge whether those races are repeatable when Winnin’onweekends starts in the $155,000 Stymie and Top Gunner in the Grade 3, $175,000 Tom Fool. Since Top Gunner resides in the barn of multiple Eclipse Award winner Brad Cox, he’d appear the more likely of the two to run back to his most recent race.
Top Gunner is an 8-year-old, and the 104 Beyer Speed Figure he earned Jan. 18 is nine points higher than his previous top, but while he might not get all the way back to that figure in the six-furlong Tom Fool, that’s not required to reach contention facing five foes.
Though Top Gunner raced for an $80,000 claiming tag last out, that’s hardly disqualifying, and in his first start after Cox and owner Michael Dubb claimed him Aug. 4 for $62,500, Top Gunner bumped his Beyer to a 95 and won the $100,000 Parx Dash. He stalked the pace at Parx Racing but made the lead last out and could wind up in front again depending on how quickly Ridgewood Runner finds stride.
Maximus Meridius, an improving 4-year-old, doesn’t run back after winning the Feb. 1 Toboggan, but the two just behind him that day, Runninsonofagun and Full Moon Madness, return. The race’s “X” factor is Bold Journey, who came to a sharp peak last winter, winning two Aqueduct stakes and finishing third in the Riyadh Dirt Sprint. Bold Journey didn’t race between last March and January and didn’t approach his best in his comeback start Jan. 26 at Gulfstream.
Winnin’onweekends is one of eight in the one-mile Stymie, a significant class hike after the 5-year-old gelding bettered his peak Beyer by 13 points, earning a 101 while racing under a $10,000 starter-allowance condition over 1 1/4 miles. That performance does not feel duplicable, though the eight-horse Stymie looks wide open.
Coastal Mission is the class of this field but ran flat last out in the Toboggan, while three horses – Yo Daddy, Bank Frenzy, and Worcester – enter on two-race winning streaks.
Worcester, a talented 3-year-old of 2023 when trained by Bob Baffert, returned in November from a 15-month layoff and in his last two starts beat up on Maryland allowance foes for trainer Brittany Russell. Worcester can improve going from seven furlongs to one mile and ought to get a good stalking run into a solid pace.
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