Great Navigator towers over statebreds in Friendly Lover

Irish Boolum won the Friendly Lover Stakes last year by nearly nine lengths, but even duplicating that performance might not be enough to earn him a second Friendly Lover in the 2024 renewal of the New Jersey-bred dirt mile Sunday at Monmouth Park – not with Great Navigator among the competition.

Great Navigator has made one start in New Jersey-bred, dirt-route stakes competition, and, it was a doozy. Last September, a 3-year-old facing older horses while getting little or no weight from them, Great Navigator won the Charles Hesse III Stakes, and won it by a mile. The gelding was a tepid 5-2 shot mainly because in July, racing in New Jersey-bred allowance competition, Great Navigator looked like a sprint horse unable to stay two turns in his route debut. Tracking a quick pace, Great Navigator ran out of gas at the top of the stretch and was beaten more than seven lengths.

The Hesse looked nothing like that. In a slower-paced race, Great Navigator took up a stalking position similar to the one he occupied in July, but this time he dashed away from his rivals in upper stretch and won by 10 lengths. A route horse? Sure looked like it.

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Great Navigator earned a 92 Beyer Speed Figure that still stands as a career best and ran his final 2 1/2 furlongs in 30.66 seconds, a solid come-home time for most any two-turn dirt contest, and especially so at Monmouth, where fast-early, slow-late is the default race shape.

Great Navigator has since made five starts with mixed results, though three of them came in graded stakes against competition far tougher than he meets Sunday. Trainer Eddie Owens and owner-breeder Holly Crest Farm wintered Great Navigator in Florida, and in his most recent start, on April 28, the gelding finished a tepid fourth in a seven-furlong allowance race at Gulfstream Park.

Expect something more like the Hesse in the Friendly Lover. Owens, 4 for 7 at the Monmouth meet, is 3 for 3 in stakes races this spring: Riding Pretty and Speaking captured New Jersey-bred races while the New Jersey-bred 3-year-old Sea Streak beat open company in the Long Branch. Including the 2023 season, Owens is 12-6-2-3 in Monmouth stakes.

Five-year-old Irish Boolum was beaten 14 lengths by Great Navigator in the Hesse, and his 2023 Friendly Lover romp at 21-1 appears to be an outlier. He’s not the fastest Friendly Lover entrant trained by Cal Lynch, but No Cents, who has a 90 Beyer on his résumé, has never gone beyond seven furlongs during a 21-start career.

Lemon Creek Louie finished a distant second behind Great Navigator in the Hesse, and he could do so again Sunday and at least slightly boost the exacta.

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