Fondly cruises to Delaware Oaks victory at Delaware Park

Virginia Oaks winner Fondly cruised to front-running victory in the Grade 3 Delaware Oaks at Delaware Park.

Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Madaket Stable’s Fondly, with Irad Ortiz Jr aboard, scored by three lengths. The favorite Margie’s Intention, with Luan Machado, finished second and Kinzie Queen, with Junior Alvarado, ended up third.

Fondly set early fractions of 49.64 seconds for the half-mile and 1:14.66 for the three-quarter miles, the daughter of Upstart completed the 1 1/16 miles in 1:45.61 over a fast track.

Fondly returned $9.80 as the third choice in the field of nine.

“I think she confirmed what we thought of her,” said winning trainer Graham Motion. “We knew we were asking a lot of her to run in the Kentucky Oaks, but it is tempting when you have the points. It is a shame that track came up the way it did. I think it was just a tough experience for her. But look, she bounced back out right after it, trained here for three weeks and some very good works. She is a very easy filly to train. She is a very straight forward filly. She is as talented as any 3-year-old filly I have had.”

For trainer Graham Motion, this is his third career Delaware Oaks victory. He won the race with Sincerely in 2000 and with Fortune Pearl in 2014.

“We had some great experiences in this race,” Motion said, who has 35 career Delaware Park stake wins.  “We won this race for Larry Johnson who is no longer with us.  We won this race with Michael McCarthy riding for us and we came back and won this race with his son Trevor riding for us, so we have had some great experiences with this race and at this track.”

Fondly raised her career record to 4: 3-0-0 with earnings of $339,200.