Babybluesbdancing class of the Rolling Meadows field

Babybluesbdancing was a 50-1 shot July 6 in the Grade 3 Iowa Oaks and a 23-1 shot Aug. 12 in the Grade 3 Monmouth Oaks, but on Monday at Arlington, it is her five rivals in the $65,000 Rolling Meadows Stakes who appear to have no shot.

Against the odds, Babybluesbdancing finished second in Iowa and a close fourth in New Jersey, and a major class drop should, barring a sudden drop in form, earn her a trip to the winner’s circle after this seven-furlong Polytrack race for Illinois-bred 3-year-old fillies.

Owned by Lizbeth Gore and trained by Terrel Gore, Babybluesbdancing easily is the most accomplished horse in the Rolling Meadows, with Illinois-bred wins in the Pat Whitworth Illinois Debutante last winter and the Purple Violet Stakes this summer at Arlington. Babybluesbdancing beat a deeper group than this by a wide margin while racing one mile on Polytrack in the Purple Violet, and her morning-line odds of 1-2 reflect her apparent superiority.

Given the short field, there does not appear to be much value to extract even in vertical exotic wagers, especially since the second and third choices, Shezahotmama and Jolee, are the most likely candidates to finish behind Babybluesbancing.

The Rolling Meadows is carded as race 5, and race 6 also should have a prohibitive favorite in Oak Brook. Oak Brook finished a close second in the Grade 3 Arlington Handicap in July, then set the pace in the Arlington Million on Aug. 12, and though sixth, he was beaten only a little more than two lengths.

A quirk in the way Chicago tracks write the conditions for Illinois-bred allowance races makes Oak Brook, despite his graded-stakes-class form, eligible to what essentially is a second-level allowance race. Suffice it to say, he should be formidable.

Canterbury: Restricted stakes

The Monday feature at Canterbury Park is the $60,000 MTA Stallion Auction Stakes, a 6 1/2-furlong race restricted to horses sired by stallions whose services were sold at the 2012 MTA Stallion Auction. If that sounds like an incredibly restricted race, it is, and the seven horses entered do not especially resemble actual stakes runners.

Fireman Oscar clearly looks like the best of them. Last summer, he won the Northern Lights Futurity, and Fireman Oscar’s lone win this year at age 3 came in a two-turn turf race, but he is adequately suited to dirt sprints and easily is the most likely winner of Monday’s race.