Beware when Jones runs two

Trainer Larry Jones has two fillies for the ninth race on Thursday at Oaklawn Park. Repeat - Larry Jones has two fillies.

It was just one week ago that Larry Jones had - note the number again - two 3-year-old fillies in the Oaklawn feature. Shytoe Lafeet finished last of seven at 5-2, while Gasia won the race going away at odds of 13-1.

"We thought [Gasia] might beat her that day," Jones conceded.

Shytoe Lafeet was the shorter price because she had just finished a close second at the class level, while Gasia's form had been obscured by a flop in a stakes race.

In Thursday's ninth race, a second-level allowance with a $100,000 claiming option, we see the same sort of thing: exits a pretty good second to the talented filly Jazzy Okie in a second-level allowance race, while Wildcat Bettie B comes off an 11th-place finish in the Martha Washington Stakes.

But make no mistake: At Thursday's 5 1/2-furlong trip, Wildcat Bettie B looks like the one to beat.

"At this point and at this distance, maybe so," Jones said. "She just has a little more natural speed than the other filly."

At one mile, the Martha Washington might be farther than Wildcat Bettie B really wants to run, and she was taken out of her game, Jones said, by an experiment at rating.

"We got her back okay, but then she kind of forgot it was time to go again," Jones said. "What she really wants is to get out there and roll, and this time she can get back to that."

bolted on the turn in a Canterbury sprint stakes last summer, but won her two other one-turn starts, including the Dixie Belle Stakes, at the front end of this meet. In her career debut last July at Prairie Meadows, she beat Gasia by more than nine lengths.

If it seems like Jones is well stocked in the 3-year-old filly division, well, he is. Besides these two, there are eight or nine others in the Jones shed row.

"We've always got a lot, but this year they all seem to be turning out pretty good," he said.

Two others to consider in the race are , who got hooked on a suicidal pace in her last start and is well suited for the short-sprint trip; and New Hope Seven, who like Wildcat Bettie B comes off a poor showing in the one-mile Martha Washington.