Campanelle looks tough to beat in Ladies Sprint

So far, Campanelle’s star has shone brightest on distant shores. All the filly’s top races have come in Europe, where she has won a Group 1 and narrowly missed winning two others. But make no mistake – this is a fabulous filly, a horse capable of winning the Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint in November and very likely to win the Grade 3 Ladies Sprint on Saturday at Kentucky Downs.

Campanelle is 8-5 on the track’s morning line, a short price but a fair price despite the fact she is only one among a dozen entrants in the main body of the $600,000 Ladies Sprint, run over an extended 6 1/2 furlongs. The purse will be $1 million if Campanelle starts. The race can accommodate 12 runners, and four are on the also-eligible list.

Campanelle herself breaks from the outside, but post 10 feels like a good thing to Wesley Ward, who trains Campanelle for Stonestreet Stables. Elle Z in post 12 is going to the lead, and Irad Ortiz Jr., Campanelle’s jockey, can follow along in her wake and take up a stalking position in the second flight.

“We drew a beautiful post,” Ward said. “One speed on the outside of her, and if Irad can sit, he can ride the same race he rode on her at Keeneland in the spring, tip out turning for home and let that big, long stride lengthen from there.”

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At Keeneland this past spring, Campanelle hit 100 on the Beyer Speed Figure scale winning the Giant’s Causeway Stakes by 2 1/2 lengths, going easily across the wire in a dominant performance. That broke a two-race streak of tough luck, with Campanelle bottled up on a sodden Keeneland course the previous October,. She finished third in a race she should have won while making her first start since a 12th-place finish in July 2021 as the favorite in the Group 1 Prix Maurice de Gheest at Deauville. There, going to post without her usual pony, Campanelle became agitated, jockey Frankie Dettori eventually walking his mount up to the gate himself. Campenelle broke in the air, rushed into contention, and faded, her only poor performance in a nine-race career.

“I’ve been telling everyone I’m really excited to run her on this course,” Ward said. “We’ll judge this race and see where we’re going in the fall.”

Drawn immediately outside Campanelle is In Good Spirits, who ran the best race of her career winning the 2021 Ladies Sprint. Toby’s Heart also won her lone Kentucky Downs start, and Brooke Marie is sitting on a peak performance – but no one is beating Campanelle if she even comes close to showing her best.

Franklin-Simpson

Ward saddles the Group 1-placed 3-year-old sprinter Asymmetric in the Grade 2, $600,000 Franklin-Simpson Stakes on Saturday, and Ward’s assessment of his chances was succinct.

“My horse is training really, really good, but the favorite looks unbeatable on paper,” he said.

The favorite is Big Invasion, and since finishing second in his career debut Jan. 7, Big Invasion has been unbeatable, period. He comes into this 6 1/2-furlong contest on a six-race winning streak that has spanned four different courses and distances between five and seven furlongs.

“He’s a top-class horse,” trainer Christophe Clement said. “He loves the five and 5 1/2, but he’s good enough to go seven [furlongs] on a regular track. The question is Kentucky Downs – going left, going right, up the hill, and down the hill. I’m more worried about the racetrack itself than the opposition.”

Big Invasion wanted to show speed in his early starts but has settled down and become a professional racehorse. In the Mahony Stakes on Aug. 14 at Saratoga, Big Invasion rallied from seven lengths off the pace, swooping to a three-length score under a hand ride from regular jockey Joel Rosario.

“It’s simple – if he switches off, he’ll stay,” Clement said.

Subtract Big Invasion and the Franklin-Simpson would look wildly competitive. Asymmetric basically ran off on the lead two starts ago in his North American debut, paying the price in the late stages, and he didn’t have an ideal trip in the Mahony. But while Asymmetric had six starts overseas, all of them came down a straightaway and thus aren’t especially relevant to this turning race at European-style Kentucky Downs.

All In Sync beat older horses last month making his turf debut in the $100,000 Turf Sprint at Ellis Park, coming with a wide, sustained run from the rear of the field to win by a neck while getting four pounds from his elders. He is not without hope Saturday, nor is Call Me Midnight, fifth behind All In Sync at Ellis on Aug. 7 while also making his turf debut. Call Me Midnight has enough quality that he beat leading 3-year-old Epicenter in the Lecomte Stakes on dirt this past January, and in the Ellis race he encountered slight traffic trouble in midstretch when going for a rail rally at a 5 1/2-furlong distance short of his best.