Point of Honor grinds out Black-Eyed Susan Stakes victory

By the time the 95th edition of the Grade 2, $250,000 Black-Eyed Susan was set to run, Hall of Fame jockey Javier Castellano was already having a pretty good day. In just over a minute and a half, Point of Honor made it a great one.

Despite being hung wide around both turns from their outside post position, Castellano picked up his fifth victory of the afternoon and fourth in a stakes when Point of Honor charged down the center of the track and held off Ulele to her inside by a half-length.

The 1 1/8-mile stakes for 3-year-old fillies was the centerpiece of Friday’s spectacular 14-race program featuring seven stakes, four graded, worth $1.15 million in purses that served as a fitting prelude to Saturday’s Preakness Stakes.

Eclipse Thoroughbred Partners and Stetson Racing’s Point of Honor ($7.80), excluded by points from the May 4 Kentucky Oaks, completed the distance in 1:47.88 over a fast main track, narrowly missing the stakes record of 1:47.83 set by champion Silverbulletday in 1999.

Private Terms established Pimlico’s track record for 1 1/8 miles on dirt in 1:47.20 on May 27, 1989.

Point of Honor, a narrow second choice at 5-2 in field of eight, gave Castellano his third career win in the Black-Eyed Susan, following Stopchargingmaria in 2014 and Keen Pauline in 2015.

Earlier Friday, Castellano in succession won the $100,000 Fidelity First & Blackwell Real Estate Skipat Stakes with Chalon, the $150,000 Adena Springs Miss Preakness (G3) with Covfefe and the $100,000 Maker’s Mark Hilltop with Dogtag. He started a string of four straight wins with Eons in Race 6.

“I’m so excited. Very happy. Everybody has been so supportive of me. I’m very blessed,” Castellano said. “With her post, it was difficult to cover up a little bit. I didn’t have the best trip in the first turn. I had to go a little bit wide, and in the second turn, too. But it worked out good because I was in the clear.”

Cookie Dough, like Point of Honor excluded from the Kentucky Oaks, broke sharply from the gate and went straight to the lead under jockey Irad Ortiz Jr., going a quarter-mile in 23.36 seconds and a half in 47.02, pressed to her outside by Grade 1-placed Brill with Ulele saving ground along the rail.

Cookie Dough ran six furlongs in 1:10.81 but saw her lead shrink to a half-length at the top of the stretch, and it wasn’t long before Ulele to her inside and Point of Honor on the outside came to challenge. Both horses worked their way past Cookie Dough in mid-stretch and Point of Honor kept finding more to outrun a determined Ulele to the wire for her second stakes win in four career starts, and first in graded company.

“We drew a little outside today and you lose ground being wide but I think she likes that kind of trip. Javier rode her as such,” Weaver said. “And she went back to where we were in the first place of wanting to go to the Kentucky Oaks and participate in some of these big races. She’s just very professional, very classy.”

Ulele was a decisive second, 2 ¼ lengths ahead of Cookie Dough. It was 4 ¼ lengths back to Brill in fourth, followed by Off Topic, favorite Always Shopping, Las Setas and Our Super Freak.

Las Setas, based at Laurel Park, saw her four-race win streak snapped. The winner of three straight stakes earned an automatic berth in the Black-Eyed Susan following her victory in the Weber City Miss April 20 at Laurel.

Weaver said a likely destination for Point of Honor is Saratoga's Alabama (G1), a 1 1/4-mile race on Aug. 17.

"Then how we get there, I guess the filly will let us know," he said. "The way she's training, a medium-term goal for us would be the Alabama. We'll work backwards from that and see what fits best."