Antonia Autumn seeks third straight win off four-month layoff

ELMONT, N.Y. – On Father’s Day, it’s a half-sister to a multiple champion who takes center stage at Belmont Park.

Antonia Autumn, whose career has endured many stops and starts, returns from a four-month layoff in search of her third consecutive victory in an $85,000 third-level allowance race scheduled for 1 1/8 miles over the inner turf course. This allowance race, which drew a field of nine fillies and mares, became the card’s feature when the $100,000 Tremont Stakes for 2-year-old males failed to fill.

Antonia Autumn is a half-sister to Gio Ponti, a multiple Eclipse Award champion, a seven-time Grade 1 winner, and an earner of more than $5.3 million for trainer Christophe Clement and Shane Ryan’s Castleton Lyons Farm. Clement and Ryan also campaign Antonia Autumn, who has won 3 of 8 starts, including her April 2012 debut at Belmont.

“She’s never been easy mentally, but she’s easier to train now,” Clement said. “The whole idea is to get her black type at some stage this year, which we’ll have to work on. She’s got talent – not as good as Gio Ponti, unfortunately.”

Antonia Autumn returned from a seven-month layoff at Gulfstream this winter, winning allowance races six weeks apart. She was being pointed to a stakes at Gulfstream before Clement had to stop on her again.

“She had a training setback just a week before the stakes,” said Clement. “She actually went back to the farm, was freshened up for three weeks, and came back.”

Clement has only two works into Antonia Autumn leading up to this race.

“I think she’s fit enough. She looks well enough. I only gave her two proper works, but I also think she’s good enough,” Clement said. “Being on the turf, I think you can get away with it.”

Antonia Autumn will be ridden by Irad Ortiz Jr. from post 2.

Clement also sends out the Irish-bred Levanto, who makes her first start of the year and her first in the United States.

“She might want to go a bit farther, so we might use this as a prep for one of the mile-and-three-eighths and mile-and-a-half races coming up later on this year,” Clement said.

Mariel N Kathy, trained by Dominick Schettino, looms as the lone speed on paper. Mariel N Kathy is a three-time winner over the Belmont turf but is winless from three starts at 1 1/8 miles.

In two races last summer at the distance, Mariel N Kathy twice finished second behind Clement-trained horses, including a head loss to Maximova in the Bit of Whimsy Stakes. Schettino doesn’t feel that the distance will be a problem, and he expects Mariel N Kathy to improve off her second start of the year. She finished fifth in this same allowance condition going a mile May 21.

“She might have needed that race off a layoff,” Schettino said. “That filly that beat her [Filimbi] might be okay, and she only got beat three lengths to her.”

Caroline Thomas, who was placed first by the stewards in last year’s Grade 2 Lake Placid Stakes; Praia, a winner of an overnight stakes last out at Churchill; and Gathering are other contenders in this field.