Daddys Lil Darling looks for winner's circle in Dueling Ground Oaks

Trainer Kenny McPeek often runs his young 2-year-olds in the mile grass races offered at Ellis Park, not so much because he thinks they are turf horses but because he believes they are distance horses.

That now works in his favor as he runs Sky Promise in Saturday’s $350,000 Fasig-Tipton Turf Showcase Juvenile. Sky Promise was third and second in a pair of dirt sprints this spring, then third on the Arlington grass before winning on turf at a mile at Ellis Park. Jack Gilligan retains the mount.

The McPeek-trained John Tippmann looked very good winning a 6 1/2-furlong dirt maiden race in his second start at Ellis. He's never run on grass but has been training over the turf gallops on McPeek’s Magdalena Farm and training center in Lexington with the Kentucky Downs’ undulating course in mind.

“We’ve been training him over the uphill, downhill gallops,” he said. “I don’t think he’ll have any trouble with the grass. I like the seven-eighths distance for him.”

McPeek also is sending out Fern Circle Stables’ Classy Music, winner of an off-the-turf mile maiden race by 4 3/4 lengths at Ellis, in Saturday’s $350,000 Exacta Systems Juvenile Fillies. 

“They were all broken as yearlings over those gallops, so that’s not really any big deal,” he said of his young horses at his farm. “They’ve all spent time out there. They went left-handed and right-handed, uphill and downhill. I don’t suspect it’s going to be any big deal. Sky Promise has a bit of experience, too; he’s been around. He’s drawn checks everywhere at whatever distance he ran. He’s a pretty quick study. He’ll figure it out.”

McPeek will run Normandy Farm's Kentucky Oaks runner-up Daddys Lil Darling — another of his 2-year-olds last summer coming out of an off-turf mile maiden race at Ellis — in the $200,000 Dueling Grounds Oaks at 1 5/16 miles on Sept. 10. She’s had quite the adventurous year, finishing a very close second in Keeneland’s Grade 1 Ashland before again rallying from far back to be runner-up to Abel Tasman in the Kentucky Oaks in the slop. 

Sent to England for the Epsom Oaks, Daddy’s Lil Darling — who following European practice did not have a pony accompanying her to the post — shied from a thunderbolt and began to run off with jockey Oliver Peslier, who came off after being unable to pull her up, resulting in the filly’s ultimate scratch. Back in the States, Daddys Lil Darling was a good fourth in the Grade 1 Belmont Oaks on turf, then fifth back on dirt in Saratoga’s Coaching Club American Oaks.

“I think she’s very versatile,” McPeek said. “The Scat Daddys will run on anything. I’m not concerned about switching surfaces. She needs to get back in the winner’s circle. If she wins this, she comes back in Keeneland’s Grade I Queen Elizabeth. If she doesn’t, there’s the (Grade 2) Mrs. Revere at Churchill.”