Familiar faces return home for salty edition of Pay the Man

The Best of Ohio series – three rich stakes cards held at each of the state’s three Thoroughbred tracks – match the best Ohio-bred runners. In the case of Saturday’s five $100,000 stakes at Thistledown, several logical candidates have come home to the Buckeye State after solid performances against open company elsewhere.

In the $100,000 Best of Ohio Pay the Man Stakes, for fillies and mares going 1 1/8 miles on dirt, Generous Lover looks to keep rolling after making her first start in the state of her birth a winning one. The filly, an open-company winner at Fair Grounds and Churchill Downs, won the Vivacious Stakes on July 19 on the Belterra turf. She now moves back to the main track, where she has made the majority of her starts, including a claiming race and an allowance race on the Churchill Downs dirt this spring.

In seeking to continue making her mark in Ohio, Generous Lover is part of a solid field of eight in which six others are fellow stakes winners, including three statebred champions.

Here’s the Spider is among the card’s standouts returning to her home state. She most recently raced at Churchill Downs, finishing fourth in an allowance/optional-claiming race behind Scalable – who came back to win the Grade 3 Monmouth Oaks. Here’s the Spider is unbeaten in three starts in Ohio, including last fall’s Best of Ohio John W. Galbreath Memorial and June’s Best of Ohio Queen City Oaks.

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Back to Ohio, last year’s champion statebred sprinter, is a five-time stakes winner, including the 2022 Galbreath. She made a rare start outside of Ohio last December, winning an allowance/optional-claiming race at Oaklawn Park. In her first start of 2024, she showed speed before finishing second in an allowance race back home. She has license to improve in her second start off a layoff but has done most of her racing in sprints.

Candlelight Hours, the defending winner of this race, owns six stakes victories and has earned two Ohio-bred championships, taking honors as the outstanding 2-year-old female of 2021 and older female last year. She comes in with fine form, having won four straight, beginning with the Best of Ohio Distaff last fall.

I Recall won the 2022 Pay the Man and Best of Ohio Distaff in a campaign that earned her champion Ohio-bred handicap mare honors. She was second to Generous Lover in the Vivacious in her first start of 2024, and it stands to reason she also could move forward with that effort under her belt.

Governor’s Buckeye Cup

The companion race to the Pay the Man is the $100,000 Best of Ohio Governor’s Buckeye Cup, for older horses going 1 1/4 miles. General Mathis also has been racing outside of his home state, as an allowance-level winner at Santa Anita. He heads back East as Cherie DeVaux takes over training from Kristin Mulhall, who has disbanded her stable.

General Mathis has made two starts this year, finishing third in a claiming race and then ninth in an allowance/optional-claiming turf race. His Beyer Speed Figure of 77 in both outings stacks up extremely well in this field. The only horse to earn a higher last-out Beyer is Fair and Square, who earned an 80 winning a statebred allowance last month. Fair and Square is the reigning Ohio-bred horse of the year, with a victory in the 2023 Best of Ohio Endurance on the season-ending fall program.

Honey Jay Stakes

In the $100,000 Best of Ohio Honey Jay Stakes for sprinters, Alwaysintomischief, who is unbeaten in his home state, takes on his elders. The 3-year-old, who owns victories in the Howard B. Noonan Stakes and Tall Stack Stakes, most recently finished seventh in an allowance/optional-claiming race stretching out to a mile on a sloppy Churchill Downs track.

Alwaysintomischief will get a good litmus test against the top three finishers from the first race in the Best of Ohio sprint series, as Hip Hip Hooray, Startdfromdabottom, and Empire’s Fire made up the trifecta in the Best of Ohio Babst/Palacios Memorial Stakes at Belterra.

◗ The program is rounded out by a pair of stakes for 2-year-olds, with the $100,000 Best of Ohio Cleveland Kindergarten and $100,000 Best of Ohio Miss Ohio both topped by impressive stakes winners. Fortissimo looks to remain unbeaten in three starts in the Kindergarten, as he comes off a 5 3/4-length victory in last month’s Hoover Stakes. He again faces Boots Malone, who was second, and Coastline, who finished third, in this field of six.

Silver Kiss has also won her first two starts. She comes into the Miss Ohio off a 10-length win in the Tah Dah Stakes over Goosebumps. The latter is back for more, along with third-place Maleah.

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