After awful streak-ending trip, Goodnight Olive starts over in Bed o' Roses

ELMONT, N.Y. – Goodnight Olive had her seven-race win streak snapped when she finished third in the Grade 1 Derby City Distaff six weeks ago at Churchill Downs. It wasn’t all her fault.

The champion female sprinter of 2022, Goodnight Olive was trapped inside for virtually the entire seven furlongs of the race, kept in by Tyler Gaffalione aboard Wicked Halo. Meanwhile, Matareya got away from both of them to win the Grade 1 stakes by one length over Wicked Halo, who was a length better than Goodnight Olive.

Saturday, Goodnight Olive looks to begin a new streak when she meets Wicked Halo and three others in the Grade 2, $200,000 Bed o’ Roses Stakes at Belmont Park.

When looking back at the Derby City Distaff, Chad Brown, the trainer of Goodnight Olive, just chalked it up to race-riding on Gaffalione’s part that prevented Irad Ortiz Jr. from having any place to go in the stretch.

“I didn’t see any opportunity for him to get out, that’s horse racing, everyone’s trying for the best placing they can get, it didn’t work out for us,” Brown said. “She was moving with enough energy where she could have had a definite say in the outcome with a clear run.”

As fate would have it, Goodnight Olive drew the rail Saturday under Ortiz.

The connections of Goodnight Olive considered running her in either the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap or the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps last weekend at Belmont, but opted for the time being to keep her at seven furlongs, a distance at which Goodnight Olive is 5 for 6.

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Wicked Halo has won five of her last seven starts, her losses being a third to Goodnight Olive in last November’s Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint at Keeneland and the aforementioned runner-up finish in the Derby City Distaff.

“We probably cost Goodnight Olive more than ourselves, but it ain’t like you’re going to get out of her way,” Steve Asmussen, the trainer of Wicked Halo, said of the Derby City Distaff.

With Gaffalione riding at Ellis Park on Saturday, Jose Ortiz is on Wicked Halo, who breaks from post 3. Ortiz rode Wicked Halo to victory in the Grade 2 Adirondack at Saratoga in 2021.

Caramel Swirl and Dr B finished one-two in the Grade 3 Vagrancy here May 14. Dr B did not have the smoothest of trips that day under Irad Ortiz, going from third to seventh around the far turn before re-rallying to get second.

That was Dr B’s first start of the year, and she figures to improve from the effort. Kendrick Carmouche rides from post 4.

In the Vagrancy, Caramel Swirl rebounded from a fourth-place finish in the Minaret at Tampa Bay Downs in February, her first start since a runner-up finish behind Goodnight Olive in last August’s Ballerina.

Junior Alvarado rides Caramel Swirl, trained by Bill Mott, from the outside post in this five-horse field.

Beguine, trained by Ned Allard, is coming off a dominant victory in a six-furlong first-level allowance run over a sloppy track here May 20, her first start in six months. She gets six pounds from her four rivals and figures to be the speed of the race from post 2 under Javier Castellano.

The Bed o’ Roses goes as race 9 on a 10-race card that begins at 1:05 p.m.

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