Sunday TimeformUS Highlight Horse: Mazayaat turns back off brief freshening

Belmont at the Big A | Race 7 | Post Time 4:09 p.m. (ET)

Senza Parole (#6) is the key to this race as she makes her second start of the season. If she can get back to the brilliant form she displayed in her 2-year-old debut last year, she will almost certainly beat this field. However, she missed the rest of that season due to injury and took over a year to make it back to the races. That return last month at Saratoga was pretty disappointing considering how much promise she had shown as a younger horse. She got a very good trip setting a moderate pace for the level, and still visibly shortened strides in the late stages to get nailed in the final sixteenth. Perhaps she needed that start for fitness, but Chad Brown typically excels with horses coming off long layoffs, so I'm not sure how reasonable it is to expect her to improve here.

Her uncoupled stablemate Alyeska (#7) is a little more appealing even though she also lost as the favorite at this level last time. She has a similar profile to Senza Parole, winning her 2-year-old debut impressively before going to the sidelines. Though she was beaten by a less-fancied stablemate last time, she at least showed some progression over her return from the layoff earlier in the summer.

The presence of the Chad Brown pair may actually ensure a fair price on the horse I want to bet. Mazayaat (#2) caught some pretty tough rivals early in her career, chasing home future graded stakes winners Indy Bay and Clicquot in her first two starts. She broke through to break her maiden in May with a field-best 108 TimeformUS Speed Figure. Her connections then bypassed allowance company to try the Wilton Stakes in her first attempt against winners, but she got caught up in a fast pace that collapsed. She has been freshened since then, and should appreciate turning back to a sprint here.