Dunbar Road the filly to beat in Mother Goose

Belmont’s Saturday overnight – the list of official entries on a racing program – didn’t come out until Wednesday evening, much later than typical, and when it did, just 61 horses had been entered on a nine-race card. You can be sure a hard-pressed racing office hustled some entries from horsemen who had no original intention to enter, but that’s not at all the case with Dunbar Road, the 4-5 morning-line favorite in the Mother Goose Stakes.

Ever since Dunbar Road lacked enough qualifying points to get into the Kentucky Oaks and was excluded from that May 3 race, trainer Chad Brown and owner Peter Brant have targeted the Mother Goose, a Grade 2 worth $250,000 and carded around one turn at 1 1/16 miles on dirt. A first-level allowance race May 30 that Brown wanted as a prep for this start filled, and Dunbar Road won by more than five lengths. She’s come back with two subsequent works and there’s no reason to believe Dunbar Road won’t take all kinds of beating Saturday.

Keeping with the short-field theme on the card, the Mother Goose drew just five other entrants. Dunbar Road and jockey Jose Ortiz must cope with the rail draw – “Not the post I’d have chosen,” Brown said – but since 2000, post 1 has as high a win rate, 16 percent, as any draw in Belmont races at this distance. Dunbar Road never has held the early lead during a three-start career that includes two easy wins and a second to the talented Champagne Anyone in the Gulfstream Park Oaks, and she might end up racing in behind Safta and Jeltrin on Saturday.

“I think she could end up pocketed and hope to find a way out,” said Brown, who also trains the sensational 3-year-old dirt filly Guarana, easy winner of the Grade 1 Acorn on the Belmont Stakes undercard.

Jeltrin finished a distant third in the Acorn after barely lifting her hooves during a 10th-place Kentucky Oaks finish, and while she’s kept a busy schedule this season her peak performance, achieved winning the Grade 2 Davona Dale, could at least put a scare into Dunbar Road.

Safta, though she only won a maiden race in her last start, might have a better chance at an upset. She was thrown into the Gulfstream Park Oaks as a second-start maiden and finished a decent fifth with an inside trip from the rail draw, and her two Belmont maiden performances, both on sloppy tracks, were encouraging.

Classic Fit enters on a three-race, three-track win streak, but hasn’t started since Dec. 8. Wings of Dawn looked good winning back-to-back races over Woodbine’s synthetic surface and has been working over the dirt training track there for trainer Mark Casse. Cassies Dreamer exits an off-turf first-level allowance win in which she beat four horses on a sloppy Belmont surface. The Mother Goose is carded as race 8 with post time set for 5:18.

Uni returns in Perfect Sting

Brown sends out another odds-on favorite one race before the Mother Goose when Uni makes her 2019 bow in the $100,000 Perfect Sting, a one-mile grass race for fillies and mares.

Uni was imported from France as a 3-year-old of 2017 and had a fine campaign that year, but she hit a new level when Brown cut her back to one-mile races last season, winning all four of her starts including the Grade 1 Matriarch on Dec. 2 at Del Mar, where she rallied from 10th at the stretch call to get up by a half-length. Uni came out of that race “really body sore,” Brown said, and now makes her first start in almost seven months.

“She just needed some time and the time has done her well. She’s training like she’s ready to run one of her bigger races,” said Brown.

Joel Rosario has the mount on Uni, who can stalk or wait at the rear of the field, depending on how things shake out. Uni has more important races on her agenda in coming months – “I wouldn’t rule out running her against males at some point,” Brown said – and will have to be on her game to handle the capable Bellavais in the Perfect Sting.

Bellavais, trained by Todd Pletcher, won the Grade 3 Marshua’s River in January and since has started in three races won by Brown-trained horses, one by the now-retired Precieuse and most recently in the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley and the Grade 1 Just a Game, both taken by Rushing Fall. The Perfect Sting, which drew only three other entrants – Mrs. Ramona G., Binti Al Nar, and Too Charming – is a step down in class. Yet there is Brown again, waiting with another tigress.