Four Graces, Edgeway top Dogwood; Bobby's Wicked One tries to rebound in Aristides

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – One-turn dirt races are the high-end focus Saturday at fan-free Churchill Downs, where the Grade 3 Dogwood will offer qualifying points toward the Kentucky Oaks when it caps a pair of $100,000 stakes.

Eight 3-year-old fillies are in the seven-furlong Dogwood, with Four Graces and Edgeway the likely favorites. Just six older horses, led by Bobby’s Wicked One, are in the six-furlong Aristides.

First post for the 11-race card is 1 p.m. Eastern, with the Aristides going as race 8 (post 4:46) and the Dogwood as race 10 (post 5:50). Both are links in the Single 6 (races 6-11), late pick five (races 7-11), and late pick four (races 8-11).

Dogwood

Four Graces will make her stakes debut looking to duplicate a sharp effort on opening day of the Churchill spring meet while also collecting her first points toward the Sept. 4 Kentucky Oaks. Julien Leparoux will be aboard from post 2 for trainer Ian Wilkes.

“She’s an extremely talented filly,” Wilkes said of Four Graces, a Whitham Thoroughbreds homebred who is a half-sister to McCraken. “With her family, we had high hopes she’d turn out well on the racetrack, and when she won on debut we thought we could have something special.”

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Indeed, unlike most Wilkes beginners, Four Graces demonstrated her ability right away when defeating a solid field of maiden fillies on March 1 at Gulfstream Park. Wilkes wins with only 4 percent of his first-time starters (25 for 628), so when one of his horses runs that way, look out. Two starts later, her 1 3/4-length allowance victory on the May 16 opener equated to an 84 Beyer Speed Figure.

Edgeway (post 8, Tyler Baze) owns the highest Beyer in the lineup, having earned a 92 in her career bow Feb. 29 at Oaklawn Park. The daughter of Competitive Edge then finished third behind a pair of highly regarded fillies in Kimari and Frank’s Rockette in an ungraded April 4 stakes at the Arkansas track before winning a first-level allowance there later in the month.

Fringe players in the 44th Dogwood include a trio fillies who opened their careers 2 for 2 but were soundly defeated in their most recent start, those being Bayerness (post 3, Florent Geroux), Ain’t No Elmers (post 4, Adam Beschizza), and Magic Dance (post 5, Ricardo Santana Jr.).

Clivetty, Lady Glamour, and Naughty Thoughts round out the cast.

The Dogwood offers 34 Kentucky Oaks points (20-8-4-2) on a revised prep schedule necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic.

Aristides

Bobby’s Wicked One was making a beeline toward the top of the national sprint division when Oaklawn intervened.

“It’s still puzzling he ran as poorly as he did,” said trainer Al Stall Jr, referring to the speedy 5-year-old horse being virtually eased in the April 18 Count Fleet, “but sometimes horses don’t like the surface at Oaklawn. We know he’s a much better horse than that.”

Seven weeks later, Bobby’s Wicked One will try to prove the Count Fleet is a scratch-off. Five of his eight prior starts had resulted in victory, most notably the 2019 Commonwealth at Keeneland and back-to-back Fair Grounds stakes that yielded eye-catching Beyers of 103 and 101.

Miguel Mena will be back aboard Bobby’s Wicked One when he breaks from post 4. His main threats appear to be Volatile (post 6, Santana), making his stakes debut after earning a 101 Beyer in a last-out allowance romp at Oaklawn, and Honest Mischief (post 2, Tyler Gaffalione), a Juddmonte Farms homebred making his first start in more than six months and trained by Chad Brown.

Honest Mischief, a winner in 3 of 6 starts, was supplemented to the race after failing to make it off the also-eligibles list for a May 29 allowance that Brown had intended to mark his 4-year-old debut. The Into Mischief colt is from one of racing’s great equine families, with the legendary broodmare Toussaud being his second dam.

Manny Wah, Heartwood, and Seven Nation Army complete the lineup.

This is the 32nd running of the Aristides, which has been won through the years by such standouts as Orientate (2002), Kelly’s Landing (2005), and Limousine Liberal (2017).

◗ Besides the two stakes, a solid Saturday card also includes two allowances (races 3 and 9) and two maiden-specials (races 7 and 11).

Following sporadic rain Thursday and Friday, the Saturday forecast calls for mostly sunny skies and mid-80s temperatures, so the main track should be fast. Fox Sports (FS2, then FS1) begins its Churchill coverage at 2:30 p.m.

The 26-day meet runs through June 27.