Choose from column A or column B in Intercontinental

ELMONT, N.Y. – There are two main paths one might follow in Thursday’s Grade 3, $200,000 Intercontinental Stakes.

One leads directly into the barn of Chad Brown, who entered three of the 10 – Significant Form, Zonza, and Stella di Camelot – in this seven-furlong turf race for fillies and mares.

The other traces to the April 25 $125,000 License Fee Stakes from which the top three finishers – respectively Fire Key, Broadway Run, and Fear No Evil – return Thursday.

Jc’s Shooting Star is entered for the main track only and likely won’t get to race. Enthusiastic Gal is 20-1 on the morning line and deservers to be higher. English import Raven’s Key has done little in two North American starts to suggest she might contend. Binti Al Nar raced flat behind a false pace making her U.S. debut May 11 in the Beaugay Stakes and adds Lasix and blinkers for this start, while also showing a fast dirt work on May 27.

Just two noses separated the License Fee three, and Fire Key barely held on despite making an easy lead. She figures to go to the front again Thursday, but among this trio, Broadway Run, who had the more difficult trip in the License Fee, probably is the one to consider.

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Brown himself says he struggles to rate his three horses, all of whom enter following poor performances, Stella di Camelot and Significant Form after half-year layoffs.

“When they open the gate I’m going to be as surprised as anyone with what happens,” Brown said. “One of them could win, they could run one-two-three, they could all need a race.”

The Intercontinental wasn’t the initial target for any of the three, but allowance races that failed to fill landed them all in the same spot.

Stella di Camelot was ready to run about a month ago and has “been training really sharp,” Brown said. A listed-class to Group 3-level performer overseas, Stella Di Camelot, proven over a seven-furlong trip, won the Pebbles Stakes here last October by 2 ¾ lengths in her U.S. debut. Always in the bridle, she looked like a winner from the quarter pole, easily overtook the decent filly Andina del Sur, and was going away at the wire, only to finish fifth at odds-on six weeks later in the Grade 2 Mrs. Revere Stakes at Churchill.

“She came back from that race kind of a mess and I just kicked her out for a break,” said Brown.

Significant Form was favored last summer in the Grade 1 Belmont Oaks but finished fourth, subsequently turning in two more modest performances before getting the winter off.

“I’ve been looking forward to cutting her back. She looks loaded in her races but she’s waiting on horses, might be a little light-mouthed. I hope there’s pace and she gets run off the bit the first quarter-mile,” Brown said.

Zonza’s encouraging overseas form was nowhere to be seen in her U.S. debut April 19 at Keeneland, where she finished a distant fourth.

“Just throw it out,” Brown said. “She struggled with the ground, never felt comfortable. She made a big move on the turn but hit a wall at the eighth pole, dropped the bit, and got tired.”

Zonza’s best showings came on straight courses and there’s a chance she doesn’t enjoy racing left-handed – but Brown is three-handed in the Intercontinental, and that should be enough.