Valentine Candy has had one of the most consistent campaigns for a sprinter this season. A five-time stakes winner in his career, he has won three of those stakes this season. Of the 11 entrants in Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Sprint at Del Mar, only one of those came in with as many as three stakes wins in 2024, that being Valentine’s Candy’s Steve Asmussen-trained stablemate, Skelly.
The 3-year-old Valentine Candy thus looms large as he drops in class, looking to bounce back from a hiccup last out, for a featured $141,000 allowance on Sunday’s Churchill Downs card, a 5 1/2-furlong sprint for sophomores who have never won a graded stakes race.
Valentine Candy has shown stakes quality on other tracks, but has not relished any strip as much as Oaklawn Park, where he won last December’s Advent and Renaissance stakes, and the Ozark and the Bachelor stakes earlier this year. He won the Robert Hilton Memorial in August at Charles Town, and was third in the Grade 2 Amsterdam at Saratoga.
The majority of Valentine Candy’s stakes wins came at 5 1/2 or six furlongs. Although the Hilton was at seven furlongs, it was on a track perhaps suited to his style. Last time out, in his first outing at Churchill Downs, Valentine Candy set the pace but then tired to fifth in the seven-furlong Harrods Creek.
Joe Shiesty won the William Walker Stakes on the Churchill Downs turf earlier this year, and is coming off a turf sprint allowance win at Keeneland. He is switching surfaces here, but the Churchill dirt, because of its composition, is often considered kind to turf-type horses. Additionally, Joe Shiesty is also a multiple winner on Turfway Park’s Tapeta – a track that horses such as Idiomatic, Rich Strike, and Two Phil’s have come off to perform well on Churchill’s dirt.
Joe Shiesty’s only effort on dirt did come at Churchill Downs, and he finished eighth in his career debut last year, won by Mystik Dan. However, the other side of the coin is that he ran greenly that day and now has 10 starts under his belt.
Billal has always been well meant, and his past performances are peppered with names such as Fierceness, Dornoch, Sierra Leone, and Domestic Product. He is coming off a six-furlong allowance/optional-claiming win sprinting at Churchill Downs, and is continuing to train forwardly.
Bear River won the off-the-turf Dade Park Dash this summer at Ellis Park. Ship Cadet won the off-the-turf Skidmore Stakes in his most recent start more than a year ago at Saratoga. Rounding out the field is Hedwig, also moving from turf to dirt after finishing eighth behind Joe Shiesty last out.
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