Ward's pair of fillies could ace juvenile stakes

Trainer Wesley Ward held a pair of aces in the Aug. 15 Bolton Landing Stakes at Saratoga, finishing first and second with his 2-year-old fillies when Stillwater Cove triumphed over stablemate Chelsea Cloisters.

Fast forward a couple weeks to Saturday, and Ward again appears to be holding the right cards with different 2-year-old fillies in grass stakes at Kentucky Downs – though this time he is splitting them.

Ward has Dragic entered against the boys in the $400,000 Kentucky Downs Juvenile, and Two Shakes against her own sex in the $400,000 Juvenile Fillies.

Both will be popular with bettors. Dragic, fourth on Aug. 5 in the Grade 2 Sorrento at Del Mar, is the 4-1 second favorite on the morning line for the Kentucky Downs Juvenile, and Two Shakes is the 3-1 morning-line choice in the Juvenile Fillies after a first-out victory at Saratoga on Aug. 10.

A daughter of Broken Vow out of the graded stakes-winning sprinter Letgomyecho, Dragic has started exclusively on dirt in her two starts. She won a 4 1/2-furlong maiden race at Keeneland April 12, then chased the pace after a tardy break in the Sorrento.

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Although Dragic is bred more for dirt than turf, a couple of sharp grass works in August at Keeneland convinced Ward to try her on grass. Then he had to decide how to spot her and Two Shakes. He ultimately felt that Dragic, owned by Steven Bell, would be the better prepared of the two to go in the Kentucky Downs Juvenile.

“Of the two at this point, she is a little more talented, I would say,” Ward said.

The Kentucky Downs Juvenile seems the superior race of the two juvenile stakes Saturday, having drawn the stakes-placed Good Good, as well as Henley’s Joy, Coral Legacy, Best You Ever Seen, and Pole Setter – colts who have won over the race’s mile distance on turf.

Dragic’s most dangerous adversary could prove to be Henley’s Joy. From the barn of Mike Maker, Kentucky Downs’s all-time winningest trainer and the three-time defending meet titlist, Henley’s Joy adds blinkers after racing greenly in a 1 1/2-length debut victory.

“Just trying to improve, which may be hard to do,” Maker said. “He ran an awfully strong race.”

Two Shakes, purchased for $310,000 as a yearling by Ten Broeck Farm, brings a flashy pedigree into her stakes debut in the Juvenile Fillies. She is a full sister to the Ward-trained Sunset Glow, who won the Grade 2 Sorrento and Grade 1 Del Mar Debutante on synthetic surfaces in 2014 before running second to Lady Eli in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf that fall.

Ward said the relatively quick return after a ship to New York is not ideal for Two Shakes, but he is encouraged by what the future holds after she broke her maiden going just 5 1/2 furlongs.

“This filly, it looks like she is going to want to go farther,” he said.

Miss Technicality, scratched from Thursday’s P.G. Johnson Stakes at Saratoga, also appears likely to appreciate a longer distance after winning her debut going six furlongs at Belmont on July 6. Racing over firm ground that produced fast times, she completed six furlongs in 1:09.31, capped by a sub-23-second final quarte-mile.

Julien Leparoux, the leading jockey at Kentucky Downs last year and in 2014, has been named to ride Miss Technicality by trainer Christophe Clement.