Clean start would make Harajuku tough in Sands Point
ELMONT, N.Y. – Harajuku may have cost herself three lengths when she took a right-hand turn out of the starting gate in the Jockey Club Oaks Invitational at Belmont Park last month. Considering she was beaten only 2 1/2 lengths, a case could be made the troubled start cost her a victory in what was her first start in this country.
Saturday, Harajuku gets a second chance at her first U.S. victory when she runs in the Grade 2, $200,000 Sands Point Stakes at Belmont. The Sands Point, which drew a field of eight 3-year-old fillies, runs as the sixth of 10 races on a card that begins at 12:35 p.m.
Harajuku, an Irish-bred daughter of Deep Impact, came here from France where she was trained by Andre Fabre for the Flaxman Holdings stable of Maria Niarchos and family. Following the Jockey Club Oaks, run at 1 3/8 miles, Harajuku stayed in the U.S. and was transferred to Graham Motion.
“She’s been very straightforward, she hasn’t missed a beat,” said Motion, who worked her five furlongs in 1:01.40 over the Tapeta track at Fair Hill in Maryland. “She had one work last weekend and I felt like after speaking with the owner that a mile and an eighth was within her scope.”
Harajuku’s seven starts this year, including six in France, have all come at 1 1/4 miles or farther. Two starts back in the Group 2 Prix de la Nonette, Harajuku finished fourth, beaten a half-length. Rougir, who finished third in that race, a neck in front of Harajuku, came back to win the Group 1 Prix de l’Opera at Longchamp and is now a contender for the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf.
In the Jockey Club Oaks, Harajuku was last after that awkward start and she couldn’t make up the necessary ground on Shantisara and Higher Truth, who finished one-two in the race.
“She didn’t get the trip they were anticipating,” Motion said.
Junior Alvarado will ride Harajuku from post 3 on Saturday.
Chad Brown, who sent out Shantisara and Higher Truth to that one-two finish in the Jockey Club Oaks, will send out Higher Truth and Fluffy Socks in the Sands Point, a race Brown has won three times in the last four years.
Higher Truth was the only filly to compete in all three legs of the New York Racing Association’s series of three marathon turf races. She set the pace in the Jockey Club Oaks before giving way grudgingly to Shantisara, who is entered in Saturday’s Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth at Keeneland.
Higher Truth has raced once at 1 1/8 miles, finishing sixth on debut at Tampa with a troubled start.
Brown’s other entrant, Fluffy Socks, is a closer. She is winless in four starts this year, and is coming off a third-place finish in the Grade 1 Del Mar Oaks on Aug. 21.
Jordan’s Leo, Runaway Rumor, Our Flash Drive, and Plum Ali, the second- through fifth-place finishers from the Pebbles here on Sept. 19, are all back in the Sands Point.
Third Draft, ninth in the Pebbles, completes the field.