Come Dancing once again a short price in a Belmont stakes

ELMONT, N.Y. -- Come Dancing delivered as an odds-on favorite in three graded stakes last year, two at Belmont Park. She will loom another short price on Saturday, when she returns to Belmont and to sprinting in the Grade 3, $100,000 Vagrancy Handicap at 6 1/2 furlongs.

Come Dancing was scheduled to be retired at the end of last year, but her owner, Marc Holliday, didn’t like the way the campaign ended, with a sixth-place finish in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint.

Come Dancing finished 12th in the Grade 1 Apple Blossom, a two-turn, 1 1/16-mile race, off a six-month layoff in April. That may have been too much to ask in her first start of the year. Come Dancing has come back with two strong workouts that indicate she still has a desire to run.

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“It didn’t turn out the way we wanted it to, but thank God she looks like she’s sound and she’s doing well now and hopefully we’ve placed her in the right spot,” trainer Carlos Martin said.

Come Dancing is 3 for 5 at Belmont, with Grade 2 stakes wins in the Ruffian and the Gallant Bloom. In between, she also won the Grade 1 Ballerina at Saratoga.

Come Dancing will break from the post 5 under Javier Castellano as the 124-pound highweight in the seven-horse field.

Royal Charlotte, a multiple Grade 2 stakes winner, finished second in the Harmony Lodge Stakes in the mud here on June 5.

“I thought she could have easily won her race if she could have gotten to the outside,” trainer Chad Brown said. “This is a much tougher field. Hopefully, she’ll improve second off the layoff.”

Brown said if Come Dancing “runs anywhere near her best race, everybody is running for second.”

Pacific Gale ran second to Heavenhasmynikki in this race last year, and most recently was third in the Harmony Lodge.

Chalon scratched out of the Harmony Lodge due to the wet track and makes her first start since October in the Vagrancy. She has run well fresh, but in an odd stat Chalon is 0 for 9 in graded stakes with seven seconds.

Mother Mother, Jakarta, and Victim of Love complete the field.