Weekend GamePlan: Picks for Comely, Seabiscuit Handicap, Coronation Futurity

Nothing but scratches and turkeys in this space the last two weeks. The stakes menu this holiday weekend Saturday is somewhat light. Hopefully, we still feast.

Comely

Raging Sea did something last month at Keeneland that no horse who participated in the 2022 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies had since been able to accomplish – win a race.

If memory serves, I picked Raging Sea to win the BC Juvenile Fillies off an encouraging performance in the Alcibiades Stakes. Didn’t realize I was jumping aboard roughly a year early.

The win at Keeneland was the first for Raging Sea since she’d captured her debut Aug. 7, 2022, at Saratoga. Raging Sea has come around the last couple months, but the guess here is she’s at least slightly overbet as the favorite in the age-restricted Comely.

At Keeneland, going this 1 1/8-mile trip on a sloppy track she handled, Raging Sea defeated some older rivals and ran past Poblano, another 3-year-old, to win going away. All due respect, but Poblano is not all that much horse, her breakthrough victory an easy-trip romp this past summer at Ellis Park. Maybe it means something, maybe it doesn’t, but it’s worth noting that in Raging Sea’s last two starts, her top performances, she ran on Lasix for the first time, and the anti-bleeding medication isn’t permitted in the Comely.

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Defining Purpose, 3-1 on the line, is a better filly than I thought after she upset a weak renewal of the Grade 1 Ashland in April. That said, it’s hard to see Defining Purpose, making her ninth start of the year, bettering her peak performance, a third in the Grade 1 Alabama, where Randomized beat Defining Purpose by more than five lengths.

Watch the Wilton Stakes, run at Saratoga in July, and see Just Katherine, once she was taken off the fence and leveled off, gaining ground on Randomized through the final furlong, eventually falling 1 1/2 lengths short. Just Katherine in her next start defeated Raging Sea by 1 3/4 lengths over 1 1/8 miles at Saratoga, and Just Katherine at her 9-2 morning-line odds would be the value in the Comely.

Granted, Just Katherine got through on the rail when she beat Raging Sea, but it wasn’t trip alone that led to success. Just Katherine has come back from an April-to-June break a consistently faster filly, and had she not flopped in the Grade 1 Cotillion last out, she’d be a much shorter price Saturday.

And the Cotillion is a throw-out. Connections told Daily Racing Form’s David Grening they ran the filly back too quickly, but I don’t think she handled the sloppy track at all. Just Katherine broke flat-footed, failed to show any positional pace, and never got close in a race with a merry-go-round shape. Saturday at Aqueduct, she could leave her rivals spinning.

Seabiscuit

The intent of Weekend GamePlan is to look for value, not the most likely winner, but Hong Kong Harry, even at something like 6-5 as the 125-pound Seabiscuit Handicap highweight, still feels like value.

Hong Kong Harry easily is the best horse in the Seabiscuit, and his top mid-90 Beyers carry a lot more weight than anything his rivals have produced. In the Grade 1 Old Forester Turf Classic, for instance, Hong Kong Harry finished closest to North America’s standout grass horse of 2023, Up to the Mark, racing over a nine-furlong trip farther than ideal.

Hong Kong Harry goes well enough over the Santa Anita course, where he won a long layoff comeback start he might have needed in his most recent outing, but might find his best form at Del Mar. He’s been aimed for a couple months at this race, which he won last year, and the lone recent workout video available online showing his Nov. 4 drill provides further encouragement. Sumter and Astronomer assure a fair pace. Hong Kong Harry is close to a sure thing.

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Coronation Futurity

Graham Motion is the sort of trainer who would rather use a debut race as a stepping-stone than have a horse run so hard that they struggle to recover. Naptown’s Laurel Park debut, where he chased a loose leader with plenty of speed and talent, was just such a showing.

Naptown moved like a different animal switched from Laurel dirt to Woodbine Tapeta for his second-start maiden win, and, physically, he looks like the sort of horse capable of staying 1 1/8 miles as a 2-year-old.

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