Gone and Forgotten eyes three-peat in Arctic Queen

Gone and Forgotten has been gone, but certainly not forgotten, at her home track. The mare is the morning-line favorite as she makes her first 2024 start at Finger Lakes as the two-time defending winner of Monday’s $50,000 Arctic Queen Stakes for New York-bred fillies and mares sprinting six furlongs.

Gone and Forgotten has won 11 of her 19 starts at Finger Lakes, and has only missed the board twice. She won the 2022 Jack Betta Be Rite and Arctic Queen Stakes to earn honors as the track’s top older female horse that season while under the care of trainer Michael Ferraro. She then added the 2023 Arctic Queen.

Gone and Forgotten has changed hands several times at the claim box this year while running at Aqueduct, Delaware, and Saratoga, most recently picked up for $45,000 by trainer Linda Dixon out of an allowance/optional-claiming race on Aug. 2 at Saratoga in which she finished third with a Beyer Speed Figure of 81, the best last-out number in the Arctic Queen. The winner of that Saratoga race, Tricky Temper, came back to win the Union Avenue Stakes on Aug. 16.

Also on Monday’s eight-race Labor Day program, which begins at 1 p.m., Finger Lakes will card the second legs in three of its claiming series introduced this year – the Mt. Rushmore for sprinters, the Wise Awake for female sprinters, and the Unhinged Iron for female route runners – as well as the third leg of its pilot claiming series, the North Warning distance series, inaugurated last year.

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While the winner of the opening leg of the North Warning series, He’sgottashortfuse, isn’t here, Disappearance and Central Love, the top two finishers in the Aug. 5 second leg at 1 1/8 miles, get a rematch at 1 1/4 miles in this card’s fourth race, with a $23,700 purse. The North Warning series ends with a final on Oct. 21.

The day’s first race is the second leg of the Mt. Rushmore series, with a purse of $18,100. Martinkelly, Brockmoninoff, and Zip It Scotty made up the trifecta in the first leg of the series on Aug. 5. Meanwhile in the sister series, the Wise Awake, none of the top finishers from the Aug. 5 kickoff are back for Monday’s third race, with an $18,700 purse.

Lindsey and Leadership Ability, one-two in the first leg of the Unhinged Iron series, meet again in the second leg, Monday’s fifth race, with an $18,100 purse.

Each of the series will conclude with a final $25,000 leg in October.

Also on Monday, a jockey footrace will be held to support the Permanently Disabled Jockey Fund (PDJF). Members of the local jockey colony will run 70 yards from the starting gate after the conclusion of the fourth race.

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