Marquee Miss no sure thing in allowance sprint

ARLINGTON HEIGHTS, Ill. – Two Augusts ago, Marquee Miss made her career debut in the $75,000 Arlington-Washington Lassie Stakes. It was a bold move, starting a filly off in a stakes race, but it paid off, as Marquee Miss won by three lengths, earning black type in her first trip to the post.

The better part of two years later, and Marquee Miss is set to run over Arlington’s Polytrack surface for the second time. The filly, trained by Ingrid Mason for Rags Racing Stable LLC, is one of seven entrants in Friday’s third race, a six-furlong allowance for fillies and mares.

Since winning the Lassie, Marquee Miss has fashioned a successful career. At 3, racing at Oaklawn Park, she won the Dixie Belle and Martha Washington stakes, and last December, she won the Holiday Inaugural on Polytrack at Turfway Park. Unusually, Marquee Miss has notched all four of her wins in stakes races: She is 0 for 3 in allowance races and might be hard-pressed to win the one she’s in Friday, too.

That’s because she faces Puntsville, who could be Marquee Miss’s equal, and at a better price. Puntsville started her 2016 season in great form, winning the Isaac Murphy Stakes for Illinois-breds at this same six-furlong Arlington Polytrack trip. Puntsville never really found her footing the rest of last season and ran below her best in one Tampa Bay Downs start over the winter, but she has turned in five workouts for her first start since December and in the past has run well fresh for trainer Michele Boyce.