Breeders' Cup Filly and Mare Turf: Emollient being considered for run on grass

In winning Sunday’s Grade 1 Juddmonte Spinster at Keeneland, a Win and You’re In race for the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, Emollient earned a fees-paid berth in the race. But if she heads to Santa Anita in the coming weeks, it almost certainly will be for the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf on Nov. 2.

Although Emollient is graded stakes-placed on dirt, the surface on which the Distaff will be contested, her form is erratic on it. Also, Juddmonte Farms, which owns the filly, could have another starter in the Distaff in Close Hatches.

The Spinster was “the goal for the season,” said Juddmonte manager Garrett O’Rourke. “We wanted to win our own sponsorship. Now she has three Grade 1 wins for the year.”

Of those three Grade 1s, two came on Polytrack at Keeneland – the Ashland in the spring and the Spinster. Her other Grade 1 win came on grass in the American Oaks at Betfair Hollywood Park at the Filly and Mare Turf’s 1 1/4-mile distance.

After Sunday’s race O’Rourke and trainer Bill Mott discussed whether to turn her out at the farm or return her to train at Mott’s Belmont base, and the pair chose the latter, leaving open the option of the Breeders’ Cup. She returns to New York on Tuesday.

The plan is to monitor her training and assess how she lines up against the potential competition before pre-entries are due Oct. 21.

Per Breeders’ Cup Challenge rules, she is not assured a starting position in the Filly and Mare Turf since the Spinster was a Challenge race for the Distaff, though she would undoubtedly gain entry even if the race oversubscribes, either from accumulated graded stakes points or as an obvious choice by the selection committee.

Running in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf represents a free roll of the dice in terms of entry fees, as a Win and You’re In Challenge winner can apply her paid fees toward another race. The fees for both races are the same, as is the purse, $2 million.

Elsewhere Sunday, the top French races contested at Longchamp appeared to add nothing to the prospective field, at least immediately afterward.

Stateside, Alan Goldberg, the trainer of Flower Bowl Invitational winner Laughing, who would have to be supplemented for $100,000, said via text that he was “looking to run.”

Initially, it appeared that the New Jersey-based Laughing might skip the Breeders’ Cup after owner Richard Santulli said following the Flower Bowl that she typically travels poorly.