Clement saddles Welcoming, Peru in turf feature

It will be a busy Friday afternoon at Belmont Park for the Christophe Clement stable. Clement has eight runners entered in six different races Friday, including two each in the highest-class races on the card, the third and the eighth.

Race 3 is the feature, a third-level turf allowance for fillies and mares carded for seven furlongs. Clement’s two are Welcoming and Peru. Race 8, also for females on turf, is carded for 1 1/4 miles, and Clement has entered Chicadoro and Blame It On Me. The two allowance races, unfortunately, each drew only six horses.

On the surface at least, Welcoming looks like the better of the Clement pair in race 3. A 4-year-old Tapit filly, Welcoming has a strange record: In dirt races, she has gone 6-3-1-0, and on turf, she is 5-0-0-3, but Welcoming still looks like a superior horse on grass.

Her speed figures leapt forward when Clement switched her from dirt to turf about a year ago, and Welcoming ran well in all three of her Belmont grass starts last spring and summer. She finished third in all three but finished with good energy each time and on Friday has her first Belmont grass try with blinkers. Clement added the hood late last year, and Welcoming’s only grass run in blinkers came around two turns, which does not seem to be her thing.

Peru’s base performance level isn’t clear. She had modest overseas form before being imported to the U.S. and finished first and fifth in a pair of two-turn, 7 1/2-furlong allowance races in January and February at Gulfstream Park.

The Chad Brown-trained Ava’s Kitten is a capable filly, but she would be an underlay at her morning-line odds of 7-5. Ava’s Kitten makes her 4-year-old debut and is unraced since Sept. 9, and her very best performance as a 3-year-old came over 1 1/16 miles and around two turns in the Appalachian Stakes at Keeneland, where she was second to Catch a Glimpse. Ava’s Kitten also has run well around one turn at Belmont and is a two-time winner over the course, but she has no apparent edge on other horses listed at higher odds.

Insta Erma, in fact, might be the most likely winner. In September, she beat Welcoming and eight others in a seven-furlong Belmont turf allowance, and while Insta Erma finished eighth, sixth, and sixth in three subsequent stakes tries, she returned from a break last month with a good third at Keeneland and could appreciate the return to what appears to be her favorite course.

In race 8, Not Taken would need a considerable forward move to win, but a decent case could be made for any of the other five fillies and mares.