Kentucky Derby longshot Litmus Test will travel in search of more manageable waters in the $300,000 Delaware Derby on Saturday. It will be trainer Bob Baffert’s fifth day of racing at Delaware Park this century. Sneaking into the Kentucky Derby field with the help of multiple defections, Litmus Test, a Grade 2 winner last year, was pegged as a potential pacesetter at Churchill Downs.The 27-1 shot never got the chance to take early command, however, after bumping at the start. He eventually faded to 17th by 37 1/2 lengths. The West Coast colt will become the first Kentucky Derby runner to participate in the Delaware Derby, where he will face a field featuring six new faces with more modest experience. Big Cuddle, a 3-year-old colt trained by Gary Capuano, is the brightest local hope and shipped from Laurel Park to Delaware for training several weeks ago. On Preakness Day, the Maryland-bred earned his second stakes victory in four starts, upsetting Final Story in the $100,000 Sir Barton. “He’s up at Delaware training, and things look pretty good,” Capuano said. “We’ll see if he can duplicate that or improve a little.” :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. Out of the Woods and Sovereign Law will both make their stakes debuts after finishing first and second in a first-level allowance at Churchill on May 2. It will be Sovereign Law’s fourth career start for Brad Cox, who won last year’s inaugural Delaware Derby with Admiral Dennis. “I feel like I’m skipping a step a little bit after the first-level allowance,” Cox said. “But I really like the way he ran last time. I like the way he’s working, how he came out of the last race.” Trainer Butch Reid cross-entered Ponder and Dream in the $125,000 Pegasus at Monmouth Park, but if he chooses to come to Delaware, the last-out Parx allowance winner could have a massive role in the pace scenario from the far outside. Alapocas Run Just Beat the Odds will make his return to the United States in the $100,000 Alapocas Run Stakes on Saturday. Coming off a valiant runner-up finish in the $2 million Riyadh Dirt Sprint, the exceptional gelding should be ready. “We have our summer plan with him, but we didn’t know what the first race would be,” trainer Gregg Sacco said. “We thought it would be the [Grade 3] True North at Saratoga, but we missed an important work at Delaware due to rain. So we went to Plan B, which was the stakes here.” A strong, sometimes overwhelming, allowance contender for the vast majority of his career, Just Beat the Odds showed his trainer enough to earn a shot in the Grade 3 Elite Power at Aqueduct in December. He was returning from an eight-month layoff and had only attempted one stakes in his 12 prior starts, but his elite allowance form held and he stormed home to win by 2 3/4 lengths. If stepping up to a graded stakes in New York was bold, traveling halfway around the world for the Riyadh Dirt Sprint in his next start might have seemed quixotic. Yet, in another stellar effort on a new continent, Just Beat the Odds came up three-quarters of a length short behind fellow American runner Imagination. Quint’s Brew, a five-time stakes winner trained by Ned Allard, is based at Delaware and will finally make a start at his home track. The gelding finished a distant fourth in the Grade 3 Westchester at Aqueduct last month. “The Westchester turned out to be a very tough race, and I think that might have been a tad farther than he wants to go against that type of horse,” Allard said. Capuano said he expected Haileysfirstnotion, the third-place finisher in the Grade 3 Maryland Sprint last month, to be prominent from post 2. He will likely be joined by Shane’s Wonder, who finished second in the $150,000 Chick Lang on the same card at Laurel. Obeah Amalfi Drive, long in trainer Michael Stidham’s periphery as a potential stakes contender, will finally take the leap in the $150,000 Obeah Stakes on Saturday. The 4-year-old filly is coming off a career-best effort at Churchill and will likely break sharply from the rail. “After that Churchill race, where she really just ran well against a really good field, it was time to give her a shot for some black type,” Stidham said. After winning the first two starts of her career in August 2024, Amalfi Drive did not run again for more than a year and then struggled to find her footing alongside more established runners. Finally, with enough experience and the right trip at Churchill, she stepped forward to win a second-level allowance in gate-to-wire fashion in May. In her stakes debut at Delaware, the Stidham trainee will take on a field of eight that includes five stakes winners, including Cash Call, the winner of the Grade 3 Summertime Oaks for Bob Baffert last year. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.