Defender Frosted Grace is favored to win Steve Sexton Mile

Coming off the best performance of his 46-race career, 8-year-old Frosted Grace returns to the scene of his first graded-stakes victory when he goes off as the 2-1 morning-line favorite as the defender Monday evening in the Grade 3, $400,000 Steve Sexton Mile at Lone Star Park.

About to make his second start for trainer Mike Maker, the millionaire entire  sired by Mark Valeski and owned by Jason Provenzano’s Flying P Stable is coming off a 1 1/2-length win March 30 in the Oaklawn Mile (G3). That performance was worth a 101 Beyer Speed Figure, according to Daily Racing Form.

Like that race in Arkansas, Monday’s holiday feature at 6:37 p.m. EDT also will go around two turns on the dirt and cover a mile, a distance at which Frosted Grace is 7: 4-1-0. He won the 2023 Sexton Mile for trainer Robertino Diodoro. Ramón Vázquez keeps the ride for Maker and starts from post 5 in the field of eight.

On what is forecast to be an 87-degree night with a threat of thundershowers, Frosted Grace is not the only former winner coming back in this race. Since his 2022 Sexton victory, Silver Prospector has gone winless in 10 stakes, including a distant sixth last year as the defending winner. Fifth in the Lake Ouachita on May 5 at Oaklawn, the 7-year-old horse trained by three-time Sexton winner Steve Asmussen and ridden by son Keith Asmussen is 8-1 on the morning line.

Everso Mischievous (3-1), a Grade 2 winner last year, comes back for trainer Brad Cox for the first time since he finished next to last in the Cigar Mile Handicap (G2) in December at Aqueduct. Likely pacesetter Touchuponastar (7-2), who has been dominant in Louisiana-bred stakes, brings in a 16: 12-3-1 record that includes a second-place result in last year’s Sexton Mile.