Sunday TimeformUS Highlight Horse: Aunt Babe should get perfect pace setup

Aqueduct | Race 6 | Post Time 3:25 p.m. (ET) | Go to the TimeformUS PPs | Not already a TimeformUS member? Sign up

My Roxy Girl (#1A) might be the horse to beat off her victory at the starter allowance level last time. She got back on track after a couple of poor efforts, at least by her standards. However, she was beating a relatively weak field that day and she’s going to have to improve upon that performance while stepping up in class. She’s done it before, but it’s not like she’s going to offer any value.

The Pace Projector is unsurprisingly predicting a fast pace, which is always the case in a race that includes the speedball Forgotten Hero (#4). She's dangerous as the potential speed of the speeds at a generous price, but a pace collapse seems more likely.

That figures to set things up perfectly for AUNT BABE (#8). Her 93 Late Pace Rating is easily the highest in this field, which just confirms that she’s the only true closer in this race. She almost pulled off the victory at this level last time and was just unfortunate to run into the vastly improved Gypsy Janie. A repeat of that performance makes her very dangerous right back. Furthermore, she’s now getting a rider upgrade to Jose Lezcano and there’s even more speed entered than last time.

The other runner that I’d want to throw into the mix is She’s a Black Belt. Michelle Nevin’s runners often need a start off layoffs, but she did run well in a few starts early in her 3-year-old season and she doesn’t need the lead to be successful. She sports an impressive work tab for the return so it’s possible that she has improved with the time away.

THE PLAY

Win: 8

Exacta Key Box: 8 with 1,2,3,4

Trifecta: 8 with 1,2,3 with 1,2,3,4,6,7