Weekend GamePlan: Picks for Haskell, Diana, San Clemente

Monmouth Park’s day in the sun might turn rainy, which could complicate the Haskell card, where three horses – Lost Horizon in the Molly Pitcher, Thundering in the United Nations, and City Girl in the Matchmaker just missed the cut for this Weekend GamePlan. Later in the day, we’ll sit back and watch odds-on Journalism win the San Diego.

Haskell

Seven entrants, 4 1/2 plausible winners of this year’s Haskell. I’m giving Ocelli, heading toward $1 million in earnings without winning a race, only half a chance, though his Ohio Derby defeat was, for a change, not really his own fault.

The Puma came up fourth choice on the morning line behind Further Ado, Napoleon Solo, and Iron Honor. He might be third choice, could even wind up second choice, but I still feel like The Puma is the value.

Further Ado took the worst of things at the post-position draw. This horse, from the evidence at hand, wants an outside pressing or stalking trip, and even Irad Ortiz Jr. will be hard-pressed to work that out drawn inside likely leader Napoleon Solo. Further Ado did get his trip facing lesser foes last out in the Matt Winn, and with all due respect, trainer Brad Cox the last three years at Monmouth has gone 2 for 12 in stakes races. He’s 2 for 9 with stakes favorites, and that includes Idiomatic getting home by a head at odds of 1-10 in the 2024 Molly Pitcher.

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Say this for Chad Summers: He does not take the typically boring diplomatic approach to public relations one encounters in most horse trainers. Napoleon Solo backed up Summers’s talk winning the Preakness, and, listening to Summers tell it, had legitimate excuses for his first two runs this season. I’m warming up to the colt but still not quite buying.

Napoleon Solo got a perfect trip, for him, in a watered-down Preakness, and if you like him Saturday, why not Iron Honor, who raced against the grain of the Laurel track on Preakness Day and who, if I had to guess, will be fourth choice here.

Further Ado finished 11th in the Kentucky Derby. I can’t imagine Napoleon Solo would have fared well in that race, nor Iron Honor, but before he was scratched with relatively minor issues, The Puma looked the part of a Derby horse. This was a sharply improving colt in late March, and I’ll forecast a continuation of that trajectory.

Workout video suggests as much – and I say “suggests” because the only ones we have are from June 6 and June 14, and The Puma has since logged four breezes over a total of 21 furlongs prepping for this start. Those two breezes early in the pattern? Really, really encouraging, and if The Puma has continued progressing in breezes we can’t see, he’ll run down Further Ado and Napoleon Solo on Saturday.

Diana

What exactly was the plan was for Kathynmarissa last month in the New York? I get that she broke a bit flat-footed, but couldn’t she have outfooted Gezora into the first turn and taken up a position just outside the slow pace set by her stablemate and eventual winner Portfolio Duration?

That, we will never know. But what we do know is that Kathynmarissa did well to finish third after going four wide uncovered around the first turn and down the backstretch, then making a three-wide move with no cover on the second turn. She might also have regressed off her sharp long-layoff comeback score in the Modesty Stakes in May.

Nine furlongs is her trip, the very firm Saratoga ground won’t hurt her chances, and Kathynmarissa is a Grade 1-level horse still seeking that first Grade 1 win. She gets it in the Diana.

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San Clemente

It is true, as her trainer told Daily Racing Form’s Brad Free, that Lookin At Diamond hasn’t run the far turn well her last two starts. She comes off the bridle and idles past the three-eighths pole. That said, and without in any way wishing to merely cast aspersions, the tactics and intensity deployed by her jockey the last quarter-mile of the Honeymoon Stakes were . . . not great.

Lookin At Diamond sparked to life the last half-furlong of the Honeymoon, that after a subtly strong debut sprint and an eye-catching second-start maiden win. I am a horse-first, human-second guy in my racing analysis, but a change of pilots could make a world of difference in the San Clemente.

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