Ky. Downs: Cox has 2 favorites in Dueling Grounds Oaks

Kentucky Downs’s seven-day, all-turf meet comes to a close Wednesday, with the 11-race card highlighted by the Grade 3, $2 million Dueling Grounds Oaks Invitational for 3-year-old fillies.

Brad Cox, who leads the trainers’ standings with six wins, will send out the two favorites in Belmont Oaks (G1) winner Fionn, 2-1 in the morning line, and Pucker Up (G3) winner Destino d’Oro, 9-2. The 1 5/16-mile Dueling Grounds Oaks attracted a capacity field of 12 Kentucky-breds.

Click here for Kentucky Downs entries and results.

For cousins George Messina and Mike Lee, the stakes can continue a magical year for their small stable, which now stands at a pair of fillies. In addition to owning Fionn, they are part owners with Stephen Smith’s Elements Racing of Stellify, who won an allowance race on Kentucky Downs’s opening card and followed that up nine days later with victory in Saturday's $2 million Ladies Marathon.

Fionn is 7: 5-1-1, all on turf, for purse earnings of $624,270. After a debut second, she won three straight before settling for third in Keeneland’s Appalachian (G2) last April behind the formidable stablemates Nitrogen and Vixen. It was a huge deal to Messina and Lee when Fionn took Churchill Downs’ Regret (G3) for the cousins’ first graded-stakes victory. Then Fionn backed that up with a nose victory over Nitrogen in the 1 1/8-mile Belmont Oaks at Saratoga.

“We beat the unbeatable horse, Nitrogen, who is a great filly in her own right,” Messina said by phone from New Orleans. “Really, nobody gave us a chance in that race. I’d have been happy to be second or third, the way it looked. But she came running. She has the heart of a champion, she doesn’t stop. You can’t see that when you’re buying them at a sale. You don’t know what’s there. She’s got that fighting spirit, that heart. She came rolling down the lane in the Belmont Oaks and really stamped herself as one of the top fillies in her class.”

Flavien Prat, aboard for the Belmont Oaks, has the mount on the daughter of Twirling Candy, whose progeny have shown an affinity for the Kentucky Downs course.

“Listen, we know we’re lucky,” Messina said. “This might be the only time ever we’re in the spotlight like this. We realize that. We don’t take it for granted at all.”

Messina and Lee had two additional horses earlier in the year who were claimed. After Wednesday’s race, they plan to go to the Keeneland September yearling sale, where they bought Fionn for $75,000 two years ago and Stellify three years ago with Smith for $140,000. The Keeneland sale started Monday, but Messina and Lee knew the horses are out of their price range until later in the week.

“We want nothing to do with book 1 or book 2,” Messina said. “That’s way above our pay grade. We want to keep some of this money we’re winning. We don’t want to spend it all.”

The Dueling Grounds Oaks’ winner will earn more than $1 million. Fionn’s stablemate, Steve Landers’s Destino d’Oro, could prove a formidable roadblock. Though Messina’s son Trace is an assistant trainer for Cox, that gives him no edge.

“We tease all the time, keep asking, ‘Who do you think is better?’ He just laughs and says, ‘They’re both good,’ ” Messina said. “That’s all you can ask. Mr. Landers, they have a great filly, too. She’s an up-and-coming filly and has a lot of talent. We know we’re going to have our hands full with her. She’s won at Kentucky Downs before (in her debut), so we know she’s going to be a tough customer.”

The Dueling Grounds Oaks is one of five races Cox is in Wednesday as he pursues his first Kentucky Downs training title. He goes into the day with a one-win lead over Mike Maker and Wesley Ward, and Rusty Arnold, Brendan Walsh and Joe Sharp have four wins apiece.

The Dueling Grounds Oaks could well determine the trainer’s title, with Ward, Arnold and Walsh also in the Dueling Grounds Oaks. Ward has Monmouth Oaks (G3) winner Running Away, who returns to the turf for the first time since her first two career starts.

Arnold has the trio of Saratoga’s Lake George (G3) winner Daisy Flyer; Totally Justified, a close second in the Regret but then seventh in the Belmont Oaks and a front-running fifth in the Saratoga Oaks (G2); and Fixin to Bee, a Keeneland allowance winner at 1 3/16 miles.

Walsh, who tied with Sharp and Steve Asmussen for last year’s trainer’s title at six wins apiece, sends out Pucker Up runner-up Hereforagoodtime.

Also in the field are 5-1 third choice Candy Quest, Woodbine’s Ontario Colleen (G3) winner; Pucker Up third-place Admit; Reining Flowers, third by a total of a neck in the Lake George and fourth in Saratoga’s Lake Placid (G2); the beautifully bred, stakes-placed Princess Attitude, by Frankel out of turf marathon specialist Keertana; and Indiana allowance winner Nosleeptilbrooklyn, seventh in the Pucker Up.

Maker, Ward, Walsh and Sharp also are in five races Wednesday after Tuesday’s early scratch time. Arnold is in three races after early scratches.

Maker's biggest score came in the Kentucky Turf Cup Invitational Stakes (G2) with Ole Crazy Bone. In the money column, Maker is in front with $2,440,862 in purses. Jose D'Angelo is second at $2,092,900, with two wins and four seconds from seven starts. Next in line are Cox, $1,913,142; Arnold, $1,787,840; Asmussen, $1,582,149; Keith Desormeaux, $1,550,017; and John Ennis, $1,511,261.

The jockey race also is tight. Frankie Dettori’s eight wins are one more than brothers Jose and Irad Ortiz Jr., with Tyler Gaffalione and Florent Geroux next with five wins. Jose Ortiz and Gaffalione are named to ride all 11 races. After Tuesday scratches, Dettori is named to ride six races, including Princess Attitude in the Dueling Grounds Oaks for Vicki Oliver. Irad Ortiz is in eight races, including Totally Justified, who is owned by Red Sox third baseman Alex Bregman.

Jose Ortiz’s stakes mount is Candy Quest for Mark Casse. Gaffalione is on Hereforagoodtime for Walsh. Geroux, on Fixin to Bee, is mathematically eliminated for the riding title with two mounts.

Jose  Ortiz leads the jockey earnings list with $3,397,636, followed by Irad Ortiz, $3,370,179; Gaffalione $3,053,577; Dettori, $2,975,784; Geroux, $2,817,620; and Prat $2,085,420.

Godolphin’s five wins are three more than six ownership entities with two apiece. BBN Nation, with three horses running Wednesday, is the only other owner mathematically able to share in the owner title. Godolphin has one final entry, in Wednesday’s 11th race for maidens.

After favorites dominated the opening three days of the meet by winning at a 50% clip, only seven of 34 hit the mark during the second three-day set, and 13 favorites finished second in that span. In a statistical oddity, the first and third finishers both went off at 2.32-1 odds in the 12th race Saturday, with the winner favored by a few dollars.