Honorable Miss pivotal race for Come Dancing
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Graded stakes races are always defining moments in a filly and mare’s racing career, but perhaps none more so than the Grade 2, $150,000 Honorable Miss will be for Come Dancing on Sunday at Saratoga.
Come Dancing, generally regarded among the leaders of her division in 2019, has gone winless in more than a year and has struggled to regain the form that saw her win 4 of 6 starts and earn more than $800,000 last year for her owners, Blue Devil Racing Stable. She began the current campaign finishing far back against a stellar field in the Grade 1 Apple Blossom, was second as the 4-5 favorite in the Grade 3 Vagrancy, and enters the Honorable Miss off a fourth-place effort here last month in the Grade 1 Ballerina.
Trainer Carlos Martin admits the Honorable Miss is a very important race for the 6-year-old Come Dancing.
“This is definitely a key race for her season,” Martin said. “We tried to squeeze a little too much out of her going up against those great horses in her first start – it was a crazy spot off the layoff. We thought we had her on the right track for the Vagrancy, but it was a weird track that day – the winner was in the eight or nine path – and she wound up getting trapped down near the inside. In the Ballerina, she was in a good spot off a very fast pace but then lugged in, checked a bit, came back outside, and still got beat only three lengths by a really good filly like Serengeti Empress. And I like the fact we beat Letruska for fourth money, and she came back to win a stakes here last week.”
Martin said he tried to change Come Dancing’s work style earlier this season, teaching her to rate her abundant speed in the morning as opposed to the blistering bullet works she posted on a regular basis earlier in her career. That was before the Ballerina. Since that race, she came back to post a bullet 46.60-second half-mile on Aug. 22 that has her trainer encouraged coming into the Honorable Miss.
Irad Ortiz Jr. will ride Come Dancing in the Honorable Miss.
“It seems like the last couple of weeks, with the cooler weather, she’s really turned it up a notch,” Martin said. “And we’ve got Irad, who has won with her in the past. If she’s anywhere near the Come Dancing she’s supposed to be, I expect her to come up with a big effort on Sunday.”
Martin said he’s hoping Come Dancing can secure good position from the rail behind the likely pace of Florida invader Lady’s Island, who had won 8 of 9 starts before finishing a tiring third as the 1-5 favorite in the Ana T. Stakes on July 25 at Gulfstream Park.
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Pink Sands is looking to regain the form that led to last-to-first victories in both the Grade 2 Inside Information and Grade 3 Rampart earlier this year at Gulfstream Park. She also will get some class relief, coming off dull efforts in both the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps and Ballerina.
Blamed exits a career-best effort from a Beyer Speed Figure standpoint, earning a 93 for her second-place finish in the seven-furlong Shine Again on July 17. She, too, figures to race forwardly placed in the Honorable Miss.
Unholy Alliance, Bye Bye J, and Pacific Gale complete the lineup.