Surface condition key for Blue Prize in Allaire duPont Distaff

BALTIMORE – Ignacio Correas will be watching the weather radar as closely as anyone when he returns to his old stomping grounds Friday at Pimlico. Correas would prefer a racing surface that is drying out, if not fast, for Blue Prize, the likely favorite in the Grade 3, $150,000 Allaire DuPont Distaff Stakes.

“I’m worried about the weather more than anything,” Correas said. “If it’s real wet and sloppy, I don’t know. I think she can handle it, but I don’t think she’s at her best.”

Blue Prize, with Jose Ortiz to ride from post 7, is one of eight fillies and mares in the DuPont, the last of seven stakes on the 14-race Friday card. With two stakes victories from her last three starts, including a win in the April 15 Top Flight at Aqueduct last out, Blue Prize figures prominently, if Correas does not scratch her.

“I feel like my filly is peaking again,” said Correas, an Argentine native who was based in Maryland for about four years prior to moving to Kentucky in 2015. “If the track is good or sealed, I think we will run.”

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Whether Blue Prize runs or not Friday, her next start will come in the Fleur de Lis on June 16 at Churchill Downs, where last fall she ended a solid 4-year-old campaign with an 8 1/2-length romp in the Grade 2 Falls City.

Correas believes 1 1/8 miles is optimal for Blue Prize, and that’s the distance of the DuPont and the Fleur de Lis.

“She’s not as effective at a miler’s pace,” he said. “She needs the extra ground.”

The top threat to Blue Prize figures to be Verve’s Tale (post 6, Irad Ortiz Jr.), trained by Barclay Tagg, who began transitioning his stable from Maryland to New York in the mid-1990s. In a memorable matchup last August at Saratoga, Verve’s Tale out-nodded Blue Prize following a ferocious stretch duel in the restricted Summer Colony. In their only subsequent clash, Verve’s Tale was third, beaten less than two lengths, as the odds-on favorite behind Blue Prize in the Top Flight.

Dorodansa (post 8, Paco Lopez), trained by Kellyn Gorder, is one of the handful of capable sleepers in the lineup, assuming she can duplicate the way she ran in a two-back allowance romp at Oaklawn Park.

“She’s an honest mare, but she likes to do her own thing,” Gorder said.

The rest of the DuPont lineup is Fuhriously Kissed (post 1, Javier Castellano), In the Navy Now (post 2, Julian Pimentel), Power of Snunner (post 3, Dana Whitney), Katalust (post 4, Terry Houghton), and Song of Spring (post 5, Ricardo Santana Jr.).

The DuPont goes as the 13th race, with post time set for 5:57 p.m. Eastern.

This is the 25th running of the DuPont, which honors the late American sportswoman who campaigned Kelso, the five-time Horse of the Year, under her Bohemia Stables banner. The 2017 DuPont winner was Terra Promessa for Steve Asmussen.

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