Casse sending La Cara, Nitrogen, Corruption to Saratoga for stakes

Trainer Mark Casse could find no excuse – other than, perhaps, a sloppy track – for 3-year-old filly La Cara’s ninth-place finish in the Kentucky Oaks.

No excuse was required earlier on the Oaks card for the Casse-trained 3-year-old turf filly Nitrogen, who won her fourth graded stakes race of 2025 with an easy score in the Edgewood.

Both horses are bound for Saratoga, Casse said Thursday. La Cara goes in the Grade 1, $500,000 Acorn on June 6, where she’ll run into undefeated Oaks winner Good Cheer and the very promising Shred the Gnar. Nitrogen starts June 7 in the $300,000 Wonder Again, already her fifth race of 2025.

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“You know me,” Casse said. “I like to run them.”

La Cara had won the Grade 1 Ashland at Keeneland in her previous race and had impressed clockers with her breezes leading to the Oaks, but after setting a fast pace she was collared in upper stretch and faded thereafter.

Nitrogen has performed like a machine this year, deploying stalk-and-pounce tactics to win two Kentucky stakes this spring by more than five lengths combined. And unless Charlie Appleby brings a Godolphin steamer from overseas, she’ll probably win the Wonder Again, too.

Casse has another Churchill-based turf horse for Saratoga next month. Corruption was second by a neck to Grade 1-class Far Bridge in the Grade 3 Pan American over 1 1/2 miles at Gulfstream Park and won a second-level, May 10 turf allowance at Churchill when cut back to 1 1/8 miles. Casse will stretch Corruption out to two miles in the $250,000 Belmont Gold Cup.

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