Crabcakes goes for three in a row in sprint feature

The highest-level race at Laurel Park on Saturday is a first-level optional $50,000 claiming sprint for 3-year-old fillies in which Crabcakes will aim for her third straight win.

A daughter of Great Notion based at Penn National with trainer Bernard Houghton, Crabcakes won a Penn National maiden race by five lengths in her career debut Dec. 3. She surfaced a week later at Laurel and scored a 1 1/4-length victory over seven Maryland-bred or -sired rivals in the $100,000 Maryland Juvenile Filly Championship.

Star Studded and Clairvoyant Lady figure to be Crabcakes’s strongest opponents.

Star Studded won her debut at Parx in November for trainer Alfredo Velazquez, who then sent her to Aqueduct for the Furlough Stakes, where she finished fourth of five. She will be treated with Lasix for the first time Saturday.

Clairvoyant Lady, who races for trainer Cal Lynch, won back-to-back races over the summer, a $40,000 maiden claimer at Laurel and then the $50,000 White Clay Creek Stakes at Delaware Park. Saturday’s race will be her first since she finished eighth in the Smart Halo Stakes at Laurel in November.