My Option 'Alert and Happy' Out of Chicago 'Cap
Tim Keeley’s star mare My Option exited her 6½-length romp in Saturday’s Grade III Chicago Handicap in good order on Sunday morning, according to trainer Chris Block. The daughter of Belong to Me won her fourth career stakes - second at a graded level - for her connections and ended a six-race losing streak of close calls and quality performances over various conditions.
“She came out really good and ate up well last night,” Block reported. “She seems very bright, alert and happy this morning. I don’t know where to go with her next, but Tim and I will sit down in a week or so and talk about that.”
With her previous win coming over the Arlington International Racecourse oval last summer in the Grade III Arlington Oaks, the versatile My Option - a stakes winner on dirt and synthetic surfaces and graded stakes-placed on turf - has proven especially lethal over the local Polytrack. “She really likes the footing on this Polytrack, but I don’t think she has to have a certain racetrack,” Block said. “I think anywhere between seven-eighths and a mile and a sixteenth around two turns is in her range.”
The multiple Illinois champion was making her third start of the season after an unlucky third in the Third Chance Handicap at Hawthorne in April and a bad start in the Grade III Hendrie Stakes at Woodbine in May. Prior to the commencement of her season, she was given a five-month refresher. “When you give a horse a break, you hope they come back where they were before,” Block explained. “Sometimes they don’t come back, especially the fillies. I knew the way she was coming into this race well and she was kind of blossoming out of her last race.”
The next chapter for the dark gray winner of five of 13 starts is still up for grabs. “I won’t say no to places farther away (namely the Grade I Clement Hirsch at Del Mar on Aug. 2), but I would definitely rather try to stay here or look at Woodbine,” Block concluded. On the filly’s radar at the end of the summer is the Grade III $150,000 Seaway Stakes at Woodbine at the same seven furlongs and similar Polytrack surfaces as yesterday’s romp.