Monmouth: Twin Lights represents significant class drop for Dancing Solo

OCEANPORT, N.J. – Dancing Solo bids for a third stakes win at the meet on Sunday in the $60,000 Twin Lights Stakes for 3-year-old turf fillies at Monmouth Park.

Breaking from the rail, Dancing Solo will look to build on a Monmouth season in which she has already captured the Grade 3 Boiling Springs and the Little Silver.

Following the Boiling Springs victory, trainer Todd Pletcher upped the ante for Dancing Solo in the Grade 2 Lake George at Saratoga. She finished seventh after encountering traffic trouble early and late.

Dancing Solo now gets significant class relief, dropping from a Grade 2 race into an overnight stakes. Once again Joe Bravo will be aboard, another barrier for the competition. The Pletcher-Bravo duo is 6-1-1 in 8 stakes starts at the meet.

“She’s ready to run again,” said Anthony Sciametta, Pletcher’s Monmouth assistant. “She’s looking good.”

The fresh wrinkle here for Dancing Solo is the distance, 1 1/8 miles, longer than the daughter of Giant’s Causeway has run.

“I don’t think that will be a problem at all,” Sciametta said. “Just look at her breeding.”

Trainer Tim Hills hopes the extra distance helps Senator Beck close the gap on Dancing Solo. The lone New Jersey-bred in the seven-horse field, Senator Beck was third in the Little Silver and seventh in the Boiling Springs.

When Dancing Solo went north for the Lake George, Senator Beck took advantage of her absence to win Monmouth’s Desert Vixen Stakes with an electrifying late run. She got an 80 Beyer Speed Figure for the victory, a number that Hills feels shortchanged her effort.

“If she gets a good trip, she shows up,” Hills said. “It was visually impressive because she had nowhere to go until she finally got outside. She just exploded. The Beyer number doesn’t reflect how impressive the race was because it took her so long to get free.”

Hills feels Senator Beck is finally getting her act together after several setbacks this season, including an abscess in her head that popped after her maiden win at Gulfstream Park and some rear-end issues resolved by a chiropractor following the two losses to Dancing Solo.

Trainer Graham Motion will be represented by a pair of stablemates uncoupled in the betting. Both fillies were third in stakes last time out: Ski Holiday in the Grade 3 Virginia Oaks and Zucchini Flower in the Walking In Da Sun at Delaware Park.