Favorite faces pace problem

OZONE PARK, N.Y. - to win.

Elegant Designer, a 4-year-old daughter of Suave Prospect, is 8 for 14 with four stakes wins. She is at her best when she is able to sit back and make one run, a style most effective when there is a hotly contested pace. Go Go Baby Go, however, looms the controlling speed in the seven-horse Interborough and may be tough to run down under Chuck Lopez.

Said Elegant Designer's trainer, Tony Dutrow: "I think her most successful races, the ones she's run her best in, is when she's had a solid pace in front of her. She definitely likes to sit and finish up."

Elegant Designer was talented enough to beat Randaroo this summer at Monmouth Park. Randaroo has come back to win three stakes and finished second in Sunday's Grade 1 La Brea at Santa Anita.

Elegant Designer will break from the outside post under the white-hot Richard Migliore, who is winning at a 32-percent clip over the inner track.

Dutrow won this race last year with Wilzada.

Go Go Baby Go has won two consecutive races since being switched back to the dirt by trainer Kathleen Demasi. In fact, Go Go Baby Go is 3 for 3 at six furlongs on fast tracks, which are the conditions she should get Thursday.

Demasi said the key to Go Go Baby Go's most recent success was the eight-week freshening she got after running four times on turf in seven weeks.

"We gave her a freshening after that last turf race, and she's responded," Demasi said.

Trainer Richard Dutrow, who is 15 for 33 with two stakes wins since the inner track opened, sends out Fit Performer in the Interborough. Fit Performer was beaten only a neck by Go Go Baby Go in an optional claiming race at The Meadowlands on Nov. 1, her first start off an 11-week layoff. She then finished second in a third-level allowance race over Aqueduct's main track Nov. 28.

Shawklit Mint is an inner-track specialist but has been off form since winning the Grade 2 Vagrancy Handicap in June. Trainer Steve Klesaris entered Drexel Monorail in the Interborough, but she is also entered in a Keeneland sale next week and may not run.

Bonefide Reason went 0 for 11 in 2003 but is always an exotics threat. She ran third in this race last year.