A three-time winner over the track, Bluefield ships north for Barbara Fritchie

Although Intrepid Daydream will be scratched, Florida-based trainer Saffie Joseph Jr. has still sent a strong contender to Laurel Park for Saturday’s Grade 3, $200,000 Barbara Fritchie, a seven-furlong stakes for fillies and mares.

The Fritchie, along with the Grade 3, $200,000 General George, headline a four-stakes card.

Bluefield won three races at Laurel before being sent to Joseph during the summer of 2022. A stakes winner against Florida-breds at Tampa Bay Downs three races back in December, Bluefield then finished fifth in the Grade 3 Sugar Swirl at Gulfstream Park. Most recently, the 8-year-old daughter of Field Commission rallied for second in the Grade 2 Inside Information at Gulfstream while earning a career-best 94 Beyer.

“That was her best race number-wise,” said Joseph. “She’s been a model of consistency. She came to us late as a 6-year-old and seems to just get better and better.”

Bluefield showed speed earlier in her career but has been taken off the pace in her last few starts.

“She’s run better if she’s not hurried earlier,” Joseph said. “As we’ve learned more and more about her, we’ve ridden her more patiently because she has a big kick for a furlong and a half.”

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Disco Ebo brings early speed to the fray for trainer Butch Reid, who saddled three stakes winners at Laurel last year with horses shipping in from Pennsylvania. A winner in 10 of 20 starts, Disco Ebo recently won a race-long duel with favored Golden Tabby in a high-level allowance at Parx on Jan. 24.

“She always gives a good account of herself and is training great,” said Reid, who expects Disco Ebo to be on the pace. He also mentioned that seven furlongs is likely the limit to her stamina.

Although Last Leaf hasn’t had her picture taken since the summer of 2022, the multiple stakes winner enters the Fritchie after hitting the board in her last eight starts, including third-place finishes last year in the Grade 3 Winning Colors at Churchill Downs and in the Grade 2 Thoroughbred Club of America at Keeneland.

Apple Picker, a stakes winner at Pimlico last summer for trainer Brittany Russell, exits two stakes placings at Laurel. In her final start of 2023, she finished second in the Willa On the Move despite being bumped off stride in midstretch.

“I love this filly,” Russell said. “[She] is doing good. We opted to skip the last stake at Laurel because she did get banged around. Anytime you get roughed up the way she did, I think it’s going to have affected her in some capacity.

“I’m not saying she wins that day, but it took a lot of run out of her. She recovered and came back on. It shows how tough she is.”

Prodigy Doll, fifth in the last two editions of the Fritchie, hopes the third time is the charm. A 6-year-old trained by Phil Schoenthal, Prodigy Doll overcame a rail bias to win a high-level allowance over sloppy going last month.

Continentalcongres and Beneath the Stars complete the field. Freccia d’Argento will likely opt for an allowance at Laurel on Sunday, per trainer Rudy Sanchez-Salomon.

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