Chocolate Kisses wins Honeybee, gets 50 Kentucky Oaks points

HOT SPRINGS, Ark. - Chocolate Kisses won on dirt for the first time Saturday in the Grade 3, $200,000 Honeybee at Oaklawn Park and in the process picked up 50 eligibility points for the Kentucky Oaks.

It was a length back in second to Motion Emotion, who finished 1 1/2 lengths clear of third-place finisher Bizwhacks. Those horses, plus fourth-place finisher Sunset Wish, also earned Kentucky Oaks points, on a sliding scale of 20-10-5.

Chocolate Kisses ($17) had just one horse beat in the early stages of the Honeybee, after favorite Motion Emotion broke on top and put up fractions of 22.46 seconds for the opening quarter, 45.99 for the half-mile, and 1:11.46 for six furlongs.

Chocolate Kisses and jockey Orlando Mojica advanced four wide on the final turn, then took after Motion Emotion in the stretch. In the late stages, Mojica guided Chocolate Kisses toward the rail and she snuck through inside, moving past Motion Emotion to cover the 1 1/16 miles on a track upgraded to fast in 1:45.75.

“I tried to keep her outside because I knew she’d been running on the turf,” Mojica said. “I didn’t want to get a lot of dirt in her face. I knew I had plenty of horse at the three-eighths pole. She finished good.”

Mark Casse trains Chocolate Kisses. He has now won the first two races in Oaklawn’s series for 3-year-olds. Last month, Casse trainee Power Gal accounted for the Martha Washington to earn 10 points for the Kentucky Oaks. The final local race in the series is the Grade 3, $500,000 Fantasy on April 12.

Chocolate Kisses won her maiden in her two-turn debut July 22 at Saratoga, in a race run over 1 1/16 miles on the grass. Her other career win came on the Fair Grounds turf, in a mile conditioned allowance Jan. 18. In between those starts, Chocolate Kisses had run a troubled fourth in the Grade 1 Alcibiades at Keeneland, prompting Casse to give her another shot on dirt Saturday.

Chocolate Kisses is a daughter of Candy Ride who races for Debby Oxley. She is out of the mare Brownie Points, a Grade 2 winner on dirt who has produced a Grade 2 winner on turf in Synchrony. Chocolate Kisses has now won 3 of 7 starts and earned $232,950.