Stakes trio square off for $65K

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - The Saturday feature at Churchill Downs is not a stakes, although stakes winners make up half the field. They are Taletobetold, Time's Mistress, and Devil House, and they should rank among the favorites in a field of six 3-year-old fillies in the feature race.

In all, three allowances, slotted as races 8 through 10, are on tap Saturday, with the ninth, a $65,000 sprint, being the richest.

Taletobetold and Time's Mistress are fresh off their stakes conquests, with Taletobetold having captured the May 12 Open Mind on the Churchill turf course, and Time's Mistress having won the Grade 3 Miss Preakness Stakes on the May 18 Preakness eve undercard at Pimlico.

Taletobetold, trained by Eddie Kenneally, switches back to the main track after upsetting the five-furlong Open Mind at 27-1. She figures to be an integral part of the pace after breaking from the inside post under Brian Hernandez Jr.

Time's Mistress ran the best race of her life when rallying to win the Miss Preakness. Rafael Bejarano gets the call from trainer D. Wayne Lukas.

The third stakes winner in the field, Devil House, won three consecutive stakes earlier in her career - the Bassinet at River Downs, and the Dixie Belle and Martha Washington at Oaklawn Park - but appears to have gone off form since then.

Completing the field are Mostbeautifulstorm, Tora, and Jersey Bond.

The two allowances sandwiched around the feature are both good races. The eighth, a $55,000 third-level turf route, could have I Believe In Me as a slight favorite in a well-matched field, while the 10th is a $50,000 entry-level turf route in which Tough Apples and A.P. Dream should draw the most play in a full field.

The practice of a non-stakes Saturday at Churchill is relatively new, as it was only last spring that racing officials abandoned longstanding tradition. The thinking was that the national attention and wagering handle from mega-programs such as Stephen Foster Day would more than make up for a stakes-less Saturday or two, and that new policy has been carried over to this year.

First post is 1:15 p.m. Eastern.