Punchbowl full of promise as she returns from layoff

Punchbowl is the latest high-level horse to flow out of the Brad Cox barn. The 3-year-old filly, narrowly beaten this past spring in the Grade 1 Ashland, makes her first start since April in the featured sixth race on Wednesday at Keeneland.

Her return comes four days after a similar Cox comeback runner, First Mission, won a Keeneland allowance race in his first start since capturing the Lexington during Keeneland’s spring meet.

Punchbowl is one of just six entered in a dirt route over 1 1/16 miles open to second-level allowance horses or $80,000 claimers. Flavien Prat rides Punchbowl, listed at odds of 4-5 on the morning line and a sure odds-on favorite.

Punchbowl, a Gary and Mary West homebred by Uncle Mo, announced her presence in her Feb. 11 career debut at Oaklawn Park, where she overcame what seemed like an impossible trip rallying from 10th under Prat to get up in a muddy-track sprint. Punchbowl was a smooth stretch-out allowance winner in her second start, showing she could gallop along at a quick clip in a two-turn race and still have something for the finish.

It seems odd on the surface to term a half-length loss in a Grade 1 from a third-time starter making her stakes debut a disappointment, but that’s how Punchbowl’s Ashland felt. The filly did race in traffic much of her trip, and she closed ground from fourth at the head of the short stretch to finish second, but in the end, she was defeated at 6-5 while failing to display the flash of her first two starts.

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Cox said Punchbowl’s ailments in the spring required no surgery.

“She just needed some time, and we gave it to her,” he said. “She’s come back really good. I think she’s a really, really nice filly. We’re just getting her back going, and hopefully this is a building block to graded stakes.”

Over the last five years, Cox has sent out 10 favorites returning from layoffs between 120 and 220 days in dirt-route allowance competition. Five have won, eight have finished first or second, and Punchbowl looks ready.

Punchbowl has been breezing steadily at Churchill Downs in company with the talented 3-year-old colt Verifying, and the robust gallop-outs that have punctuated those works strongly suggest a filly who won’t come up short.

Cox has a second entrant, Insignia, who got an 88 Beyer on July 14 at Ellis Park in a nine-length, first-level allowance score. She was far less effective six weeks later and is an unlikely winner, but breaking from the rail with a touch of pace she could provide a target for her stablemate.

Scratch Kat is the likely second choice. She was a borderline stakes horse during 2022 but has struggled to find that form this season, and even at her peak never evinced the raw ability pouring out of Punchbowl.

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