Speaking back for repeat try in New Jersey Breeders' Handicap
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Many New Jersey-breds spend part of the fall, all winter, and early spring away from the races, awaiting Monmouth Park’s annual spring return and the chance to start in statebred-restricted competition. For those horses, Sunday is the last major day of racing during 2023, as Monmouth hosts an all New Jersey-bred 10-race card that includes a pair of $100,000 stakes races.
A third stakes, the Charles Hesse III, didn’t make it onto the card, which is headlined by the New Jersey Breeders’ Handicap and the Eleven North Handicap. Both races, carded as the seventh and ninth, respectively, are contested over six furlongs on dirt, the Eleven North restricted to older fillies and mares.
Speaking won the Breeders’ Handicap in 2022 and will be favored to win it again Sunday. Breaking from the rail under Jairo Rendon, Speaking is one of nine entered in the Breeders’ Handicap and carries top weight of 123 pounds, giving between three and seven pounds to his rivals. Trained by Eddie Owens for his breeder, Holly Crest Farm, Speaking has raced only twice in 2023 and hasn’t started since May 21, when he won the Reilly Handicap in this same division.
The break between starts is all about opportunity – namely, there have been no suitable ones for a horse like Speaking, a five-time winner who won the Smoke Glacken Stakes in his second start at age 2 but isn’t quite at the level of an open-stakes sprinter. Speaking has kept to a steady work pattern all summer and surely is ready to run his race, but his trip could turn tricky from post 1.
Royal Urn won the 2020 Breeders’ Handicap but isn’t the same horse now as he was then, while No Cents finished a solid second in the Reilly, also his most recent start. No Cents is an exposed 5-year-old, but 3-year-old Wild Mule has a chance to improve and post a mild upset.
Wild Mule, who carries 117 pounds, is 2 for 2 facing New Jersey-breds and exits a decent fourth in the Jersey Shore Stakes, an Aug. 5 Monmouth sprint for 3-year-olds. Despite taking on his elders Sunday, Wild Mule still gets a measure of class relief, and he likely needed that recent outing, his first since May.
The 10-horse Eleven North includes last year’s winner, I Can Run, who starts for Claudio Gonzalez, runaway leading trainer at the meet since his barn, out of nowhere, began winning in droves around the first of June. Gonzalez’s super-trainer summer aside, I Can Run more naturally is a route horse than a sprinter and got a great pace setup winning the 2022 Eleven North.
The race flow Sunday might work in favor of a front-runner, Mia’s Crusade, who could not quite stay one mile on turf in July and one mile on dirt in June. In May, making her most recent start in a sprint, Mia’s Crusade went wire-to-wire in the Spruce Fir, a race just like the Eleven North, and she can do so again under regular rider Jomar Torres.
:: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.