Del Mar: Adare Manor, Fun to Dream lead Clement L. Hirsch

Your basic small but select field, five 4-year-old fillies who are all graded-stakes winners, will go for a Grade 1 prize at Del Mar on Saturday in the 53rd edition of the Clement L. Hirsch Stakes, a 1 1/16-mile race on the main track that carries top-level honors and a $400,000 prize.

Additionally, the Hirsch is a Breeders’ Cup challenge race that guarantees the winner an admission free berth in the $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff, which will be run this year at Santa Anita in November.

Trainer Bob Baffert, who won the Hirsch in 2020 with Fighting Mad, will send out a pair of solid candidates in the Saturday headliner in Michael Lund Petersen’s Adare Manor and Jill Baffert or Connie Pageler’s Fun to Dream.

Trainer Phil D’Amato, who’ll be in quest of his first victory in the stakes, also will saddle two of the runners in Little Red Feather’s Elm Drive along with H & E Ranch’s Desert Dawn. Finally, trainer John Sadler, with five notches already on his belt in the Hirsch, will send out Keith Abrahams’ Kirstenbosch.

Adare Manor, an Uncle Mo offspring who is 11: 5-4-0 on her career, well could be the favorite in the crucible. The speedster comes into the race off a trio of scores, the last two coming in Grade 2 stakes at Santa Anita. She figures to be on or near the lead throughout and she’ll have the saddle services of her regular rider, Juan Hernandez, for the test, which goes as Race 10 on an 11-race card.

The other Baffert filly, Fun to Dream, is a California homebred daughter of the trainer’s Hall of Fame stallion Arrogate out of the Maria’s Mon mare Lutess. She’s won six of her eight outings and is the lone runner in the lineup with a Grade 1 tally already to her credit, that coming in the La Brea at Santa Anita last December. Hernandez had ridden the filly in all eight of her previous starts, but chose to go the other way for this affair. That left the door open for veteran Ramon Vazquez to pick up the mount.

Elm Drive, who’ll have Ricky Gonzalez in the tack, is a five-time winner who has gone two turns only once before with results that were not promising. She’s by the Tapit sire Mohaymen out of an Indian Charlie mare

Desert Dawn, who is also by a Tapit stallion, has a 14: 2-2-5 career line with earnings of $696,525, tops among all the runners in the lineup. She’ll have regular rider Umberto Rispoli aboard as she goes again in a race where she ran second last year to top mare Blue Stripe.

Kirstenbosch is a homebred by Midnight Lute with a trio of victories and six other placings to her credit. She’ll be handled by Hector Berrios in the select field. In her most recent start, Kirstenbosch finished second to Adare Manor in Santa Anita’s Santa Margarita (G2) on June 10.

The Clement L. Hirsch is scheduled for Saturday at 9:41 p.m. EDT.