Wedding Toast returns to win Beldame

ELMONT, N.Y. – Wedding Toast came back from her 16-week hiatus like she'd never left.

When last seen under silks, Wedding Toast won the Grade 1 Ogden Phipps on the Belmont Stakes undercard June 6. On Saturday, she went right to the lead in the $400,000 Beldame at Belmont Park and came home an impressive 2 3/4-length winner.

"I never touched her with the whip," said winning jockey Jose Lezcano.

Wedding Toast earned a fees-paid berth in the Breeders' Cup Distaff in the Phipps, and in the Grade 1 Beldame, she signaled she is ready to use it.

Trainer Kiaran McLaughlin freshened Wedding Toast over the summer and was pointing her to the Aug. 29 Personal Ensign at Saratoga when she developed a minor foot issue. McLaughlin backed off and instead pointed her to the 1 1/8-mile Beldame.

Wedding Toast came into the Grade 1 Beldame off a series of five works over the synthetic surface at the Greentree training center, which is next door to the Saratoga backstretch, and McLaughlin was confident he had her ready.

Lezcano put her right on the lead in the Beldame, and she clipped off fractions of 24.11, 47.57, and 1:11.28. He asked her to run in upper stretch and gathered her back up in the final sixteenth.

"I hardly ever do this, but I told Jose not to give her a hard race if he didn't have to," McLaughlin said. "I told him we have another race in five weeks."

While a number of eastern horsemen are heading to Kentucky early to prepare for the Breeders' Cup, McLaughlin said he will keep Wedding Toast in Saratoga for the time being.

"I'll keep a watch on the weather, and if it starts snowing, then we'll go,” he said, joking. "We have a synthetic track at Greentree; we have the Oklahoma dirt track; we have a lot of ways to go up there."

Wedding Toast, a 5-year-old daughter of Street Sense owned by Godolphin and bred in Kentucky by Darley, paid $3.30 to win in the Beldame and was timed in 1:47.67 after getting a mile in 1:35.21.

Runner-up Curalina stumbled at the start to get away a step slowly. She moved up along the inside on the backstretch of the one-turn race, rallied after the winner in the stretch, but was second best.

It was five lengths back from Curalina, a 3-yrear-old, to Catch My Drift, who lodged her best bid four wide into the stretch.

The win puts Wedding Toast firmly in a crowded upper echelon of the filly and mare division along with Beholder, who is being pointed to the Breeders' Cup Classic; Sheer Drama, who has won the Personal Ensign and Delaware Handicap in her last two starts; Untapable and Stopchargingmaria.

Wedding Toast now is 5 for 6 at Belmont Park.

"She loves the one turn," McLaughlin said.

The Breeders' Cup Distaff will be run around two turns, however, and while Wedding Toast is 2 for 2 around two bends, both of those races came in 2013.

Wedding Toast also is 0 for 1 at Keeneland, having finished fourth last April in the Grade 1 Madison at seven furlongs.

While Wedding Toast will have questions to answer in the Distaff, she showed Saturday she will head to the race at the top of her game.