Weekend GamePlan: Picks for Belmont Oaks, Delaware Oaks, Hendrie

Combine the three oaks races in Delaware, Indiana, and Iowa, and we’d have something. Anyone volunteering for the nonexistent position of national stakes coordinator? We have interest in a pair of Brad Cox charges in Iowa, but Just a Touch will be the wrong price and Hit Show in the Cornhusker just missed making the cut. One might be compelled to play against overbet Impel in the Indiana Oaks, but where, exactly, is Chatalas’s baseline?

Belmont Oaks

She Feels Pretty feels like the only horse in this Grade 1 who one might, at this juncture, call a Grade 1 horse. I like her, she’s good, but this filly on pedigree and style sure looks more like a miler than a horse built for a stretch to 1 3/16 miles. At their prices, in fact, I’d prefer her Cherie DeVaux-trained stablemate, Sy B, who suits the distance, has been showing signs of rapid improvement, and galloped out ahead of Wonder Again winner Segesta.

Segesta tops the Chad Browns. For a few strides, when challenged at the furlong grounds in the Wonder Again, Segesta appeared to be toying with her rivals, but victory appeared to be slipping away at the wire when Sy B kept coming.

The speed figure Dynamic Pricing earned in the Edgewood doesn’t fit what I thought of her and the race in general.

Bettors could gravitate more strongly to the Godolphin shipper Cinderella’s Dream than the morning line suggests. Her Guineas seventh didn’t seem like anything special, and the filly in Dubai and last year in Europe beat precious little.

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If it rains heavily late in the week and into Saturday, Fun With Flags’s soft-ground French form comes into play. The filly who toppled her last time, Halfday, returned to finish 12th in the French Oaks.

English import Secret Satire gets the nod, and here’s hoping Frankie Dettori, never shy about leading, lets the filly run a bit in the early stages. Two reasons for this: The Belmont Oaks has serious pace void, and Secret Satire just might, for a change, relax if she were allowed to set the tempo while racing in the clear.

Riders have struggled finding Secret Satire’s off switch. She got away with pulling too hard in the Musidora, a performance, to me, better than anything the other Euros have put forth, but her over-racing caught up with Secret Satire in the Oaks, where the rider eased her home after all was lost.

Secret Satire easily saw out the 1 5/16 miles at York, and if she comes to the quarter pole holding a lead, they won’t catch her at Aqueduct.

Delaware Oaks

You would be hard-pressed to find a narrower filly than Power Squeeze. Seen training from the fifth floor of the Churchill grandstand, Power Squeeze in the week before the Kentucky Oaks looked about as wide as a credit card. She was nowhere near beating Thorpedo Anna in the Acorn at Saratoga but ran hard enough that I expect her to regress coming back a month later.

Also expect Power Squeeze to be solidly favored, and even with Princess Indy a scratch, Sidamara could go to post a fair price.

The Delaware Oaks lacks pace, and while Sidamara did, too, her last two starts, she showed plenty of tactical foot debuting in a one-turn mile. Sidamara had no business winning her maiden at Keeneland considering her trip, and she inhaled rivals on the far turn last out at Churchill, making the lead at about the quarter pole despite going wide. Sidamara’s ceiling is far higher than Power Squeeze’s, and at a higher price, as well, she’s the play.

Hendrie

In February, trainer Jose D’Angelo brought Run Classic back from a nine-month layoff to win a listed stakes by almost four lengths. Freedom Speaks hasn’t raced in 15 months, but she also can return a winner.

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All Tapeta surfaces aren’t created equal, but Freedom Speaks made her debut on the Gulfstream Tapeta, her lone synthetic start, and loved it, an 11.65-second final furlong propelling her to a runaway victory. That maiden race sits many levels below this graded stakes, but Freedom Speaks’s 2022 wins in a Saratoga allowance and in the Music City at Kentucky Downs tell us she’s good enough for this, and neither of her two subsequent races, one on dirt, the other around two turns, suited the mare.

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