Dance Away Capote returns

Unable to make her scheduled start in the Kentucky Oaks three weeks ago because of a fever, Dance Away Capote is healthy and ready to run in Saturday's $100,000 Go for Wand Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Delaware Park.

"Dance Away Capote is doing super," said trainer H. Graham Motion. "She worked on Sunday at Fair Hill in 1:13 breezing going six furlongs, so she should be ready. Knock on wood, everything is going in the right direction, and I know she handles the Delaware track, which is always a positive."

In her lone start at Delaware, romped by 12 lengths in a minor stakes last September.

After a non-competitive effort in her first start at 3 in the Grade 2 Davona Dale at Gulfstream Park, Dance Away Capote regained her form when she drew off to capture the Bourbonette Breeders' Cup Stakes at Turfway Park in March.

Dance Away Capote's chief competition in the seven-horse field for the 1 1/16-mile Go for Wand figures to come from Last Toots and Bayou Breeze.

Last Toots, from the same connections of last year's 3-year-old sensation Smarty Jones - owner Patricia Chapman and trainer John Servis - finds a softer spot after being ambitiously placed in the Grade 2 Comely at Aqueduct for her stakes debut last month.

contested a swift early pace in the one-mile Comely before fading. She is likely to face a lot less pace pressure in the Go for Wand because the only other pure front-runner in the field, Bouvet, set far more modest fractions in her two wins against maiden claimers and first-level allowance fillies.

Before the Comely, Last Toots had shown great promise, winning back-to-back starts at Philadelphia Park by a combined 24 3/4 lengths.

Bayou Breeze ships in from New York for trainer Kiaran McLaughlin. She has been first or second in 5 of 6 lifetime starts and comes off a career-best Beyer Speed Figure of 86, which was earned in a second-place finish in a one-mile allowance at Belmont. That number compares to the 88 Beyer that Dance Away Capote received for her Bourbonette victory.

will be ridden by Heberto Castillo Jr., who won four stakes in five mounts at last year's Delaware meet.

The sleeper could be Gotta Rush, whose best race came in the second start of a form cycle, when she ran second with an 80 Beyer in a stakes at Tampa Bay Downs. She could be approaching another peak performance in her second start off a layoff.