Flower Bowl, Rodeo Drive will clarify picture

A somewhat-cloudy picture of the leading North American candidates for the Grade 1, $2 million Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf should become clearer Saturday. On separate coasts, two Grade 1 preps are being contested – the Flower Bowl at Belmont and the Rodeo Drive at Santa Anita – that give the winners expenses-paid berths in the race, courtesy of the Breeders’ Cup Challenge Win and You’re In program.

The Flower Bowl, worth $600,000, drew, among others, leading BC Filly and Mare Turf prospects Abaco and Stephanie’s Kitten, along with some other promising runners who could join the fray with top performances.

Stephanie’s Kitten, fresh off runner-up finishes in the Grade 1 Diana and Beverly D., is among the top U.S. turf mares in training, though she remains winless in four starts this year and is perhaps a cut below her peak form from early 2013.

The late-running Abaco narrowly took the Grade 2 Ballston Spa in her last race and has Beyer Speed Figures in the mid-90s that match up well against the other leading North American contenders pointing for the BC Filly and Mare Turf.

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The Rodeo Drive is seemingly no less of race than the Flower Bowl, despite offering half the purse at $300,000. Miss Serendipity, Moulin de Mougin, Parranda, and Stormy Lucy – the top mares on turf in California this year – are expected to be joined by a couple of New York shippers in Irish Mission and Emollient.

Irish Mission and Emollient are at their best on firm ground, conditions common in Southern California at this time of year.

Unless some mare has a breakthrough race in either the Flower Bowl or Rodeo Drive, the chances are good that a European filly, or one formerly based overseas, will be favored when the Filly and Mare Turf is run Nov. 1.

Defending champion Dank is being pointed to the race, provided she trains forwardly after a physical setback at Ascot this summer, owner James Wigan recently told The Racing Post. And Tarfasha also would draw public support if she travels to Santa Anita, having just won the Grade 2 Blandford Stakes at the Filly and Mare Turf’s distance of 1 1/4 miles.

Breeders’ Cup-nominated horses who have already earned expenses-paid berths in the Filly and Mare Turf include Euro Charline, who won the Beverly D. in her first start in America; Tapestry, the winner of the Group 1 Yorkshire Oaks; Canadian Stakes winner Deceptive Vision; and Minorette, this summer’s Grade 1 Belmont Oaks winner.