Kentucky Oaks runner-up Drexel Hill headlines Royal Delta

Drexel Hill brings Grade 1 stakes-placed credentials into Saturday's Grade 3, $175,000 Royal Delta at Gulfstream Park, where the 4-year-old daughter of Bolt d'Oro faces Shred the Gnar and six other older fillies and mares in the 1 1/16-mile feature on a 12-race program.

"I think she is where she needs to be. This is a really tough race on paper," trainer Whitworth Beckman said. "Distance-wise, it might be on the short end of her spectrum, but hopefully she'll get out there and have a good trip and make something of it."

Coming off her first stakes victory in the ungraded Busher at Aqueduct, Drexel Hill made a name for herself at Churchill Downs in last year's Kentucky Oaks (G1), closing from 13th and last to finish second at 32-1.

"We knew she was going to run well in the race. She was training well up to that spot. We loved the mile-and-an-eighth distance," Beckman said. "I was a little bit confused why she was that far back in the race. In the Busher, she was pretty far back but going into Aqueduct first time on that deep surface there … and there was a pretty decent pace that day."

In the Oaks, Drexel Hill closed from eighth at the top of the stretch with a six-wide rally but fell 2 3/4 lengths short of catching victorious Good Cheer.

"Coming into the lane, I knew she was going to have to do a lot to get to the winner, but she put in a helluva effort to finish second that day," Beckman said. "It was an incredible day, and an incredible day for Legion Bloodstock and me, especially, and we got something to build off of."

Drexel Hill exited the Oaks with a slight issue that required time off. She came off a six-month layoff to rally from ninth to second in the Nov. 8 Mother Goose (G2) at Aqueduct. She enters the Royal Delta off a victory at Tampa Bay Downs in the 1 1/16-mile Wayward Lass, in which she sat closer to the pace and raced five-wide around the turns.

"She's a hard filly to predict on that. Early on, she was kind of really far back in some of her starts. I put the blinkers on and she was too close. I took the blinkers off and she was too far back. She always makes a move," Beckman said. "In the Oaks she was way far back and she comes back in her next start and she's three (lengths) off the pace. … I think she adapts to the field. It seems to be like there's nothing she needs to have to go her way for her to put in the effort."

Hall of Famer Javier Castellano, who rode Drexel Hill in the Mother Goose, returns aboard the filly Saturday.

Beckman, a former assistant trainer for Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher, Eoin Harty and Chad Brown, campaigns at Gulfstream for the first time this winter. He has 15 horses in training at Payson Park.