Quick Picks

- A couple of quick picks if there’s anyone out there who’s not away. The New York Handicap is a 10f Grade2 at Belmont, and it leads off the ESPN telecast. Mott has Wend (Pulpit), his 4 yo filly who has won all 4 of her turf races by daylight, must recently in a 150K stake at Calder. She tries graded stake and the mile and a quarter for the first time, but is still sure to attract a lot of money. She’s out of Thread, a stakes winning Topsider mare who is inbred 3x3 to Round Table (who won the United Nations Handicap twice). However, she’s going to face a tough customer today in Film Maker. She’s a Grade 1 winner who really blossomed last fall, running a close-up 4th here in the G1 Flower Bowl followed by her second to Ouija Board in the BC Filly and Mare Turf. She returned from a 7 month layoff by winning the Grade 3 Gallorette at Pimlico at last month. Graham Motion has used the same weekly series of 7 furlong works to prepare for this, and I think she prefers the longer distance today.

And at Delaware, there’s the Denise Rhudy (no relation to Kelly Hrudey) Memorial; I love these 3 yo filly turf stakes. Take a look at Grat (A.P. Indy). She raced an OK 5th in a G3 at Gulfstream, and in her last, a N2X at Churchill, she came from way back and 7 wide despite the lack of any pace whatsoever. They came home in :11 4/5, so I can only imagine how fast Grat was running. She’d been off two months before that race, and trainer Thomas Proctor hits at nearly 40% in the 2nd off a layoff category.