Grade 1 winners Dancing Rags, Sweet Loretta begin year in Beaumont Stakes

LEXINGTON, Ky. – A pair of Grade 1 winners making their first starts as 3-year-olds will clash with a handful of up-and-comers when the Beaumont Stakes is run amid glorious spring weather Sunday at Keeneland.

Dancing Rags, the winner of the Grade 1 Alcibiades here last fall, and Sweet Loretta, a dead-heat winner of the Grade 1 Spinaway at Saratoga last summer, are among a field of seven fillies in the Grade 3, $150,000 Beaumont.

Both Dancing Rags and Sweet Loretta were well beaten in their last start Nov. 5 in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies. Both will be turning back to the Beard Course distance of seven furlongs and 184 feet following a series of steady workouts in south Florida.

Dancing Rags will have Angel Cruz aboard from post 5, while Sweet Loretta gets Javier Castellano from post 3.

Meanwhile, a few of the opposing fillies in this 32nd running of the Beaumont show more recency and actually have surpassed the two Grade 1 winners in the Beyer Speed Figure department, including My Miss Chiff (post 2, Mitchell Murrill) and Treble (post 4, Jose Ortiz).

Treble, a close second in an Oaklawn Park allowance a little more than two weeks ago, is “an improving filly, and we expect her to move forward,” said Ron Moquett, who trains Treble for Rialto Racing and Southern Springs Stables.

“But she’s going to have to,” Moquett said. “I mean, the field is 28.6 percent Grade 1 winners.”

The balance of the field is Laney (post 1, Julien Leparoux), Sine Wave (post 6, Florent Geroux), and Promises Broken (post 7, Robby Albarado).

The Beaumont offers 17 qualifying points to the May 5 Kentucky Oaks, with 10 to the winner. The last Beaumont winner to run back in the Oaks was Diplomat Lady in 2006.

Sponsored by Adena Springs, the Beaumont is carded as the eighth of nine Sunday races. First post is 1:05 p.m. Eastern, with the Beaumont set for 4:57. A $78,000 turf allowance filled with graded stakes winners directly precedes the feature as race 7 at 4:24.

The forecast for Sunday is for sunny skies and a high temperature of 76.

KEY CONTENDERS

Dancing Rags, by Union Rags

Last 3 Beyers: 62-73-63

◗ Off a Laurel Park maiden victory, this Graham Motion-trained filly pulled a 12-1 upset in the Alcibiades before finishing eighth in the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita.

Sweet Loretta, by Tapit

Last 3 Beyers: 59-75-75

◗ Todd Pletcher-trained filly won the Grade 3 Schuylerville before dead-heating with Pretty City Dancer in the Spinaway, after which she was 11th in the Breeders’ Cup.

Treble, by Macho Uno

Last 3 Beyers: 80-74-74

◗ Gray filly was a first-out winner on opening weekend at Oaklawn before getting valuable experience in a pair of first-level allowances, ending with her just-miss on March 24.

My Miss Chiff, by Into Mischief

Beyers: 79-78

◗ She has done nothing wrong in quickly going through her first two Louisiana-bred conditions for Al Stall Jr. at Fair Grounds and now gets a major class test.