Jumping the Gun happy to be home for stacked Delaware Oaks
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Jumping the Gun might be up against it in the Grade 3, $300,000 Delaware Oaks on Saturday, but if anyone wants to take her down, they will have to do it over her home track.
Trainer Andy Simoff has been waiting for this one at Delaware Park.
“She has the advantage,” he said. “It’s really supposed to heat up today and tomorrow. These guys are coming from Kentucky and all over. A good horse runs and you can’t give them excuses, but it’s not ideal for them to have to ship over in that heat. I don’t know if it will make a difference, but it can’t help.”
After moving to Delaware in 1985 and saddling his first horse as a trainer two years later, Simoff only participated in two graded stakes before Jumping the Gun came along in 2025. At the end of her juvenile campaign, the Gun Runner filly’s star rose when she shipped to Aqueduct and finished a distant second to Zany in the Grade 2 Demoiselle.
Despite returning with a flat effort in the $150,000 Weber City Miss at Laurel Park in April, Simoff was undeterred and entered Jumping the Gun in the Grade 2 Black-Eyed Susan the following month. In a much sharper showing, she seemed all but ready to overtake My Miss Mo at the top of the stretch but had to settle for second when that rival kicked away by 1 3/4 lengths. She now returns to Delaware, her home base where she won the first three starts of her career.
Dazzling Dame is the only horse to defeat Jumping the Gun at Delaware, when she dueled the local contender into defeat in the $100,000 White Clay Creek last October. Trainer Brittany Russell will bring the front-runner back off an eighth-place finish in the Kentucky Oaks.
“She’s been good at Delaware,” Russell said. “Obviously, it’s going to be tougher than what she ran against the last time she was there, but she’s done well. She came out of the Oaks in good shape. We just need to see where we are with her.”
Several fillies in the 1 1/16-mile race have run well in stakes company without breaking through for a win, but none have been quite as plagued by close defeats as Luv Your Neighbor. The Canadian-bred has finished in the money in six straight stakes starts, including five runner-up finishes by less than 1 1/2 lengths.
“She’s found a home in the second spot, and we’re hoping that we can change that,” trainer Michael Stidham said.
Hopeful for a breakthrough at Delaware, Stidham moved her to the track shortly after she finished second in the Grade 2 Eight Belles at Churchill Downs on May 2.
Sneaky Good, the runner-up in the Grade 2 Beaumont at Keeneland last time out, is cross-entered in the $175,000 Monomoy Girl at Churchill on Saturday. Trainer Brad Cox said Thursday that he was leaning toward coming to Delaware.
Pashmina, trained by Rob Atras, isanother Kentucky Oaks also-ran. She ships in looking for her first stakes victory.
“The main thing is she came out of the Oaks good and we were just looking for a race that had a little more spacing,” Atras said.
The tactical filly finished second in the Grade 3 Gazelle at Aqueduct in April, getting away with soft early fractions on the front end but coming up short against Always a Runner, the next-out winner of the Kentucky Oaks.
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