Not So Close is back for Norm Casse in redrawn Noble Damsel

Marylou Whitney Stables’ homebred Not So Close has been re-entered by trainer Norm Casse in the Grade 3, $150,000 Noble Damsel, a one-mile, inner-turf test for fillies and mares Friday in the Belmont at Aqueduct meet.

The race was rescheduled after hazardous weather conditions forced the cancellation of Saturday’s card. The same field was re-entered with the lone defection being Runaway Rumour, who won Friday’s John Hettinger for trainer Linda Rice.

Click here for Belmont at the Big A entries and results.

“I kind of prefer it, and it’s a little bit better that we got the extra week,” Casse said of the postponement for Not So Close. “It’s not necessarily the spacing between races, but logistically, she had just come down (to Kentucky) from Saratoga, and for us to send her right back to New York didn’t seem ideal. This works out a little bit better.”

The 4-year-old daughter of Empire Maker enters from an optional-claiming win Aug. 17 at Saratoga, where she had her second outing over the turf after making her first six starts on dirt.

Sent to post as the longest shot in the five-horse field, Not So Close led each step of the way in the one-mile contest to fend off the late bid of Chili Flag by three-quarter lengths. The effort garnered a career-best 90 Beyer Speed Figure, according to Daily Racing Form. Third-place finisher Sister Lou Ann exited to win the One Dreamer on Sept. 7 at Kentucky Downs.

Casse said switching to the grass has allowed Not So Close to move closer to the potential she has shown in her morning exercise.

“I feel like once we switched her to the grass, she seems like she became a better racehorse,” Casse said. “She’s a horse that we’ve been high on from day 1. I don’t really believe in morning glories. A lot of people would say, ‘Oh, this horse is a morning glory,’ but I think if they act like they’re good in the morning, you just need to figure out what they’re good at in the afternoon. We played around with her a little bit and decided if she was going to become a more useful horse, maybe grass was the avenue that she needed to go down.”

Not So Close graduated by 14 lengths at third asking in an off-the-turf, maiden special weight in July 2022 at Ellis Park and scored her first victory against winners two starts later by eight lengths in a March optional claimer at Fair Grounds.

Even though each of the dark bay’s wins has come in gate-to-wire fashion, Casse said she does not necessarily need the lead to be effective.

“She’s grown up a lot mentally, and in her earlier races, she would run off with the rider and get a big head start so that other horses couldn’t catch up to her, but as the races got tougher with better horses, that didn’t work as well,” Casse said. “Now since we took the blinkers off and started her on the grass, she seems to settle more in the earlier parts of the races. I’m a big proponent of if you have speed, you use it, but if anybody ever wanted to go off in front of us, she could sit right off of them no problem.”

José Lezcano has been tasked with the ride from post 5.

Venti Valentine and Movie Moxy, two of five original main-track only entrants, were re-entered under the same condition among the nine horses drawn into the field Sunday.

The Noble Damsel at 5:42 p.m. EDT is the 10th of 11 races Friday. The first post will be at 1:05 p.m.