Cox can continue hot streak in Raven Run with Emery; $26,809 pick six carryover
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Perhaps you’ve lost track of trainer Brad Cox’s recent performance in high-level dirt races. A refresher.
Starting with the 2-year-old filly Immersive’s appearance in the Grade 1 Spinaway on Aug. 31 at Saratoga, which she won, Cox has gone 6-0-2 from eight starters in Grade 1 and Grade 2 stakes on dirt. That’s right: 6 for 8. Only seven trainers have won more than six graded stakes on dirt this entire year.
And at Keeneland this month? Cox has run three horses in graded dirt stakes: Immersive, Federal Judge, and Idiomatic all won.
Even a diehard contrarian might be resigned to eating Cox chalk Saturday at Keeneland in the Grade 2, $350,000 Raven Run Stakes, the ninth race and penultimate leg in a pick six wager that has a $26,809 carryover.
Ten 3-year-old fillies were entered in the seven-furlong Raven Run and the field came up competitive – except that Cox sends out Emery.
Emery, 7-5 on the morning line, exits a second-place finish in the Grade 1 Test at Saratoga. She looks on paper like the Raven Run’s most likely winner. Cox hasn’t been missing with that type.
A year ago, Cox entered Emery in the 1 1/16-mile Alcibiades at Keeneland but scratched the filly to start in the Frizette, a one-turn mile in which Emery finished fourth. That marked her final start at age 2 and her last race beyond seven furlongs. Emery, a Stone-street Farms-owned filly by More Than Ready, is a one-turn runner.
Back in action this spring, she easily won a first-level Keeneland allowance before landing a Churchill Downs stakes and the Grade 3 Victory Ride at Aqueduct, and only Ways and Means, among the favorites for the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, stopped Emery’s winning streak. Emery probably wasn’t winning the Test, but she did get jammed up along the fence, making the pace with Ways and Means breathing down her neck. Emery ceded the lead in upper stretch but battled back when switched outside before the eighth pole, a game second to an excellent foe.
Cox since has freshened her. Emery has been working steadily at Churchill Downs. She’ll take some beating under Tyler Gaffalione.
V V’s Dream could be up to the task. V V’s Dream did run in the Alcibiades a year ago, finishing second to the good filly Candied in her two-turn debut. She ended her campaign with another two-turn start, then ran in a pair of early-season routes at Fair Grounds, going on the shelf after a third-place showing in the Fair Grounds Oaks.
“This is just a really good, solid filly who had a setback and needed a break,” said trainer Kenny McPeek.
When the break ended last month at Churchill, V V’s Dream showed up in a six-furlong sprint. Sharp going one turn early in her career, V V’s Dream just might be a one-turn horse, McPeek conceded.
In the Churchill race, V V’s Dream sliced between horses in upper stretch before running out of steam the final half-furlong, finishing third behind two other Raven Run runners, Mink’s Palace and Riperton.
“She needed the race, just got tired,” McPeek said.
Expected improvement elevates V V’s Dream over the fillies who just finished in front of her, and might even put her in range of Emery.
Two more fillies, My Mane Squeeze and Fibber, finished one-two in the seven-furlong Dogwood at Churchill, though that was a one-horse race. My Mane Squeeze burst to the front at the three-sixteenths pole and stormed home a five-length winner over Fibber, a sharp performance that might not have been an outlier.
My Mane Squeeze does her best work in one-turn seven-furlong races like the Raven Run, and when third behind Emery in the Test, she never looked comfortable on a sloppy surface.
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Miuccia finished a solid third in the Grade 3 Prioress last out but in two previous starts proved no match for Haulin Ice, who tries for a Raven Run rebound after failing to handle the small oval at Charles Town in their local oaks Aug. 23. Twirling Queen could contend if her turf and synthetic form transfers to dirt, which it did not during her 2-year-old season.
Uno Le is the lone entrant without any logical hope – not even if Cox trained her.
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