Blamed should be on again in Shine Again

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – If Blamed runs true to her form, she is supposed to win Friday’s $85,000 Shine Again at Saratoga.

“I think we’ve won with her every other time we’ve run her,” trainer Bill Mott said. “I think that’s because every other time we’ve run her, we placed her better.”

Blamed has indeed won every other start since joining Mott’s barn following five consecutive one-sided victories at Zia Park and Sunland Park late at 2 and early in her 3-year-old campaign. She enters the seven-furlong Shine Again off a loss, a fourth-place finish in the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps five weeks earlier.

Blamed’s on-again, off-again win pattern includes victories in the Grade 3 Comely at Aqueduct in November 2018 and the Grade 3 Royal Delta the following winter at Gulfstream Park along with two allowance races, one at Gulfstream and most recently at Oaklawn Park prior to making her Grade 1 debut in the Phipps. The majority of her victories came when on or with the lead.

“We took the blinkers off her and I’ve told the riders time and again she doesn’t have to be in front,” Mott said. “She’s doing well coming out of her last start and while she’s never won at seven furlongs, she’s won at 6 1/2 furlongs and a mile, so it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Blamed will be reunited Friday with jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., who guided her to two of her four wins for Mott including the Royal Delta.

A field of 10 older fillies and mares will contest the Shine Again, a group that also includes Indian Pride, a lightly raced but talented filly trained by Chad Brown. Indian Pride has won 2 of 3 career starts, returning from an eight-month layoff to register an easy and very popular first-level allowance victory at Belmont as a stepping-stone to her stakes debut Friday.

“It’s good to have her back. She’s doing really well, and I think she got a lot out of her first race and I’m looking forward to trying her in stakes company,” Brown said. “I like the fact she won impressively over the track a year ago, although I’m trying not to make too much of that this summer because it’s a totally different track than the one we had last year.”

Positive Spirit is a big question mark in the race, making her first start for trainer Michael Stidham and first since she clipped heels and fell shortly after the start of the Kentucky Oaks. Winner of the Grade 2 Demoiselle with former trainer Rodolphe Brisset in her 2-year-old finale, Positive Spirit finished third in her career debut in her only previous try at seven furlongs. Along with her win in the Demoiselle, she also was runner-up in the Grade 2 Gazelle at 3, both races decided at 1 1/8 miles.

The potential for a lively pace should be a plus for the late-running Risky Mandate who finished third in the Grade 2 Prioress here last summer after which she was sidelined for nearly 10 months before returning to finish second under high-priced allowance and optional-claiming conditions June 28 at Churchill Downs.

Group 1 Argentina-bred winner Joy Epifora, Estilo Femenino, Bella Ciao, Honor Way, Slimey, and Please Flatter Me complete the lineup.