Fantastic Style Heads Beaumont
Kaleem Shah’s Fantastic Style, riding a two-race win streak at Santa Anita, heads a field of seven 3-year-old fillies entered Thursday for Sunday’s 30th running of the $250,000 Adena Springs Beaumont (G2).
The Adena Springs Beaumont, run over the Beard Course of seven furlongs, 184 feet on the main track, will go as the eighth race on Sunday’s nine-race program with a 4:42 p.m. ET post time.
The Adena Springs Beaumont is the final race on the Road to the Kentucky Oaks, offering 17 points on a 10-4-2-1 scale to the top four finishers. The $1 million Longines Kentucky Oaks (G1) is limited to the top 14 point earners that pass the entry box, but none of the Beaumont starters will have enough points to crack the current top 14.
Trained by Bob Baffert, Fantastic Style has won two of three starts and was the 1-2 favorite when she won her most recent start on Feb. 26. John Velazquez has the mount and will break from post position two.
Returning to the dirt for Sunday’s race after second- and fourth-place finishes respectively in the Bourbonette Oaks (G3) over Turfway’s Polytrack surface are Sweet Success and Harlan’s Destiny.
Trained by Rusty Arnold, Sweet Success is owned by G. Watts Humphrey Jr. and W.S. Farish. A maiden winner at Gulfstream before running in the Bourbonette, Sweet Success will be ridden by Corey Lanerie and break from post three.
Harlan’s Destiny, owned by James Miller, had a four-race win streak snapped in the Bourbonette in her 2015 debut. Channing Hill has the mount and will break from post four.
The field for the Adena Springs Beaumont, from the rail out, is as follows: Divine Dawn (Kerwin Clark, 118 pounds), Fantastic Style (Velazquez, 118), Sweet Success (Lanerie, 118), Harlan’s Destiny (Hill, 118), Zeven (Javier Castellano, 118), Miss Ella (Rajiv Maragh, 118) and Delightful Joy (Paco Lopez, 118).
DIVINE DAWN LOOKS TO CONTINUE JONES’ ROLL
IN SUNDAY’S ADENA SPRINGS BEAUMONT
With the Grade 1 Central Bank Ashland in his pocket compliments of Lovely Maria, trainer Larry Jones will attempt to nab a Grade 2 on Sunday when he sends out Divine Dawn in the 30th running of the $250,000 Adena Springs Beaumont.
Divine Dawn broke her maiden here last fall in her debut on the main track and followed that with a victory on the grass at Fair Grounds.
“I was trying to get a race in her before the Silverbulletday and the turf was the only race that would fill,” Jones said.
Divine Dawn finished fifth in the mile and 70 yards Silverbulletday behind stablemate I’m a Chatterbox.
“After that we thought that maybe she is not as good as I’m a Chatterbox and Lovely Maria, so that’s why we are trying the Beaumont,” Jones said. “She does not mind the turf; she has won on it, but Bernie Flint kept beating me (with Mizz Money, who is entered in Sunday’s Appalachian (G3) Presented by Japan Racing Association).
“We are thinking that one turn might be her game. With a little luck Sunday, we will look at the ($200,000) Eight Belles (G3 on May 1), which is a race I’d like to win for some reason.”
Former Kentucky Gov. Brereton C. Jones owns Lovely Maria. He also is the owner and breeder of How About Him, who romped to a 7¼-length maiden win Wednesday.
“He’s a pretty neat little horse,” Larry Jones said of the half-brother to 2012 Kentucky Oaks (G1) winner Believe You Can. “We will look for a next-level allowance race for him.”
Larry Jones plans to keep Lovely Maria and I’m a Chatterbox, winner of the Rachel Alexandra (G3) and Fair Grounds Oaks (G2), at Keeneland for another two weeks before going to Churchill Downs for the $1 million Longines Kentucky Oaks (G1).
“I would say the latest we’d go would be the Friday (April 24) before the Oaks,” Jones said. “I’m a Chatterbox will work once here and both of them will have their final works for the Oaks on the Sunday before.”
GALLOPING OUT
With Bruised Orange’s three-length victory in the first race Wednesday, trainer Wesley Ward has won the first 2-year-old race of Keeneland’s Spring Meet in six of the past nine years. Ward co-owns Bruised Orange with Gatewood Bell and races her in the name of Hat Creek Racing. The City Zip filly, ridden by Rafael Hernandez, covered 4½ furlongs on a good track in :51.92.
Trainer Anne P. Smith earned her first Keeneland victory when Windy Hill Farm’s Whyruawesome captured the second race Wednesday by 3½ lengths. Rafael Mojica Jr. rode the 4-year-old Whywhywhy gelding, who covered seven furlongs in 1:24.82.
Source: Keeneland Association