Weekend GamePlan: Picks for Belmont Derby, Victory Ride, Indiana Oaks

The boutique meets of Saratoga and Del Mar are just around the corner, but hey, this block is pretty nice, too! Multiple stakes cards all over North America, with the focus on Long Island. Preservationist just missed this week’s cut as a front-running Belmont Oaks threat, but we have two more horses in New York and an Indiana special.

Belmont Derby

The temptation is just to default to the European, since we’ve seen them over and over going to America and taking home the money. Trans-Atlantic shipping has become smoother, and it no longer seems like much of a deal going from, say, England to New York. Charlie Appleby and Godolphin have maintained a steady presence in New York stakes for several years now, but both here and back home in England, the Appleby train has finally slowed this summer. Silver Knott ran fine in the Pennine Ridge, but Far Bridge ran better, and the morning-line odds of 6-1 on Silver Knott seem about right. I’m not especially interested.

The supposedly better European is The Foxes, and he is pretty good. That was a fine renewal of the Royal Lodge he won last fall, and fifth of 14 in The Derby is nothing to sneeze at. At 1 1/2 miles, that might have been a touch far for The Foxes, but behind the top two, proper colts both, it’s uncertain that The Derby was much of a race. The horses who came back in last weekend’s Irish Derby, other than the winner, Auguste Rodin, showed little, and even Auguste Rodin had to work to win. The Foxes’s trainer, Andrew Balding, has a handful of American wins, the most recent in 2017, but has barely run anything here of late.

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Far Bridge earned a long look. The move out to 1 1/4 miles should really help this colt, who needs his races to unfold at a gentler tempo. The Churchill trip two back was not ideal, and the one at Belmont last out was, frankly, awful. There’s a great chance Far Bridge runs the best race of his life Saturday at a fair price.

Kalik supposedly is the Chad Brown “A Team” here, but it’s hard to see his two recent wins, solid as they were, as anything more than radically pace aided. Maybe he gets another easy lead, but the more likely scenario is Wizard of Westwood helping move the pace along.

It’s the Brown-trained Redistricting that holds the most interest. Fair to say this is a trainer very, very well versed on what kind of horse fits which turf race in New York, and he appears to be telling us that Redistricting, off the 1 1/16-mile maiden score, fits this 1 1/4-mile Grade 1. Agreed. The colt is bred to be better over this longer trip, and he had the look of a star in the making coming through the last quarter-mile of his first race.

Victory Ride

It’s worth downgrading short prices because of potentially negative pace scenarios. But if fair value is presented on a horse who, on paper, appears to be disadvantaged by race shape, it can be worth betting that things will work themselves out.

So it is with Dazzling Blue, who has shown a lot of speed starting her career with three wins and is drawn inside some serious pace players. We’ll see, but raw talent can go a long way, and Dazzling Blue could prove a far better horse than her speed figures suggest.

She broke poorly from the rail last time and was hustled to the lead, but we can’t say a more patient approach couldn’t work. This is a filly who goes very fast without looking like she’s going fast. She had her last race won at the quarter pole before coasting to the wire. Red Carpet Ready will be a handful; Dazzling Blue might beat her.

Indiana Oaks

Here’s hoping folks view Taxed’s Black-Eyed Susan with skepticism. I’m a believer.

It’s not just that she won going away over a decent bunch of fillies, but the way she won. Taxed has been improving for a few months now. She carried herself with confidence during morning training the week of the Black-Eyed Susan and ran the same way. Her final furlong and the subsequent gallop-out showed a horse at the peak of her powers, and Taxed’s breeze pattern since strongly suggests we’re getting more of the same Saturday.

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