Suspect form from top to bottom in feature

Bon Raison headlines the featured eighth race Thursday at Belmont Park. Or does he?

David Aragona’s Belmont morning line lists Bon Raison as the 8-5 favorite in this seven-furlong dirt race which has a $100,000 claiming option as well as multiple conditions but fundamentally is a third-level allowance race. Favored he might well be, but Bon Raison’s form lays itself open to hole-poking, an exercise that always should be undertaken with a short-priced horse.

So, maybe 5-2 second-choice Sir Ballantine is the logical alternative. Or not. His past performances elicit at least as much skepticism as Bon Raison’s. And so it goes in this race, which has seven entrants – and a knotty thicket of confounding data points.

Four-year-old Bon Raison if nothing else was an incredibly successful $16,000 claim last summer at Saratoga. He since has won five races and enters Thursday’s start following wins in a second-level allowance and the $76,000 Peeping Tom. About the March 30 Peeping Tom: That was a starter-allowance race rather than a stakes, and its runner-up, Lazarus Project, proved incapable in his next start even of winning for a $32,000 claiming price. The second-level allowance race came more recently, April 18, and was a stronger performance against a better field. But it’s entirely possible the race was too recent and too strong for Bon Raison, who followed his last peak performance, on Feb. 16, with a considerable step back, albeit on only a week’s rest.

Sir Ballantine, entered for the $100,000 claiming price, exits the Carter Handicap, which in addition to being a Grade 1 was a very odd, slow-paced race: His distant sixth of seven there can be easily excused. Two starts ago, Sir Ballantine was an easy second-level allowance winner in his own right, but that was the best race 5-year-old Sir Ballantine ever has run, and the runner-up, Almithmaar, returned with a flat performance in a Keeneland race at the same class level.

The pace here is tricky, as well. California Night, who has shown six-furlong speed, is the likeliest leader but the fractions he doles out figure to be tepid.

Commendable 7-year-old Backsideothemoon, who is headed toward a half-million in career earnings, clearly is class-capable but probably can’t get up at a distance this short. Holiday Bonus and Hit It Once More also cut back from longer trips and while both have stale form to fit the spot, their recent performance level has not been nearly high enough.

Which leaves us with Awesome Saturday. This is the third start into a circuit switch from Midwest to East and a barn change to trainer John Kimmel for Awesome Saturday, who moves back to dirt, and while his recent turf form is solid, Awesome Saturday probably prefers dirt. Seven furlongs, in fact, might be his best game, and his career peak performance, a third-place finish 13 months ago in the Grade 3 Commonwealth Stakes at Keeneland, was a seven-furlong dirt race. In a race overflowing with questions, maybe Awesome Saturday is the answer.