Rice keeping With the Angels with statebreds, going shorter in Key Cents

OZONE PARK, N.Y. – The 2-year-old filly With the Angels, who has dominated New York-breds in three starts so far this year, is likely to remain with her own kind in Sunday’s $100,000 Key Cents Stakes for statebred juvenile fillies going six furlongs at Aqueduct.

Trainer Linda Rice had the option of waiting for the Grade 2, $250,000 Demoiselle going 1 1/8 miles here on Dec. 7, but wasn’t satisfied enough with the filly’s 3 1/4-length victory in the one-mile Maid of the Mist Stakes on Oct. 27 to stretch With the Angels out in distance at this time.

“Based on that mile race, I’m not comfortable going a mile and an eighth,” Rice said Sunday. “I thought she was little flat at a mile.”

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With the Angels, a daughter of Omaha Beach, earned a 79 Beyer Speed Figure for her Maid of the Mist victory. It was the lowest of the three figures she has earned so far this year. With the Angels debuted on Aug. 22 at Saratoga going six furlongs, winning by 11 1/2 lengths and earning an 82 Beyer. A month later, she won the seven-furlong Joseph A. Gimma at Aqueduct going seven furlongs by 9 3/4 lengths before her Maid of the Mist victory.

Rice was also thinking about putting With the Angels away for the year before she worked a strong half-mile in 47.90 seconds over Belmont Park’s training track – she galloped out five furlongs in 1:01.30 – on Sunday in company with the unraced Security Detail, who was credited with a five-furlong move in 1:03.11.

“We’ll probably run here based on today’s breeze,” Rice said. “There’s nothing wrong with making money.”

Rice also plans to run Nina Kay in the Key Cents. Nina Kay, a daughter of Cupid, won her debut by 3 1/2 lengths on Sept. 28, one of the rare days at the Belmont at the Big A fall meet where scheduled turf races were rained off to the dirt.

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