Jenny Wiley winner Regal Glory will try to extend win streak in Just a Game at Belmont

Regal Glory posted her third straight graded stakes score in Saturday’s Grade 1 Jenny Wiley at Keeneland and will look to make it four in a row in the Just a Game in New York a little less than eight weeks off.

The Grade 1, $500,000 Just a Game is contested on the Belmont Stakes undercard on June 11. The race is at a mile, a distance at which Regal Glory has proven proficient.

Owner Peter Brant purchased Regal Glory out of the dispersal of the late breeder Paul Pompa Jr. in January 2021 and kept her with trainer Chad Brown. He said her long-range target before she joins his broodmare band next year could be the Breeders’ Cup Mile against males on Nov. 5 at Keeneland, rather than the Filly and Mare Turf, which has been contested at 1 3/16 miles in the event’s two prior renewals at Keeneland.

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“I think her sweet spot is really seven furlongs to a mile and a sixteenth,” Brant said after the Wiley, which was at 1 1/16 miles. “It’s a long way off, but probably” the Mile.

The only time Regal Glory, a 6-year-old Animal Kingdom mare, raced beyond 1 1/16 miles, she was sixth in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup at 1 1/8 miles in fall 2019 at Keeneland.

Stablemate Shantisara, making her first start since winning the 2021 Queen Elizabeth II, chased Regal Glory home by a length in second in the Jenny Wiley. Shantisara took a bad step when she stepped back onto the dirt from the turf course and eventually got a van ride the rest of the way home out of what Brown termed “an abundance of caution.”

On Monday, Brown said in a text that Shantisara had been sound the day after the race, with clean radiographs.

“We are still evaluating thoroughly and hope to have her back under tack very soon,” Brown wrote.