Time and Motion tries to regain winning form

In a season that has already developed into a competitive one for the female turf division, Saturday’s Grade 3, $100,000 Eatontown Stakes at Monmouth Park has drawn a bulky field that includes all the ingredients of a major event – a Grade 1 winner, several additional graded performers, entrants from divisional heavy hitters Chad Brown and Graham Motion, and plenty of international flavor.

Time and Motion is the lone Grade 1 winner in the field, with a victory in the 2016 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup last October at Keeneland – her fourth stakes victory of the season. However, she is looking for her first win since then. After Time and Motion was a non-threatening sixth in the Grade 1 Jenny Wiley to start 2017, trainer Jimmy Toner equipped her with blinkers last out, and she finished an improved third in the Grade 3 Beaugay Stakes on the yielding Belmont Park turf – beaten less than a length by Hawksmoor and Dacita.

The field includes two additional graded stakes winners in Tin Type Gal and Zipessa. Tin Type Gal, who won the Grade 3 Boiling Springs on the Monmouth course last summer for Motion, is making her first start since September. Zipessa, trained by Michael Stidham, returned from a six-month layoff to finish fifth in the Grade 2 Sheepshead Bay at Belmont last out, bobbling at the start but quickly rushing up to lead before tiring on yielding turf.

Grand Jete made her first start for Brown in the United States, and her first start in five months, a winning one, dominating a Keeneland allowance by 4 1/4 lengths. Brown also saddles Irish-born Light in Paris, who has been in his care since 2015 after she was stakes placed in the early part of her career in France. She won the Plenty of Grace at Aqueduct in April.

There is additional European influence in the field in the consistent Shaan, trained by Todd Pletcher, and the welltraveled Kyllachy Queen.

Stakes-placed Shaan, on the board in eight of her nine starts, scored her first U.S. win in a Keeneland allowance last out.

Kyllachy Queen, a stakes winner in Italy and England, acquitted herself well in her first start in nine months, finishing second by a neck in a Keeneland allowance on yielding turf.

Parx: Abiding Star returns

Abiding Star, a multiple stakes winner last year on the Mid-Atlantic circuit, looks to get back on track as he makes his season debut in a $55,000 no-conditions allowance at Parx.

Abiding Star won his first five starts last year for trainer Ned Allard, including handy scores in the Private Terms at Laurel and the Parx Derby, earning a shot at the Preakness Stakes. He was soundly beaten in the second leg of the Triple Crown, beginning a skid in which he was unplaced in five of six starts to end the year.

Sonny Inspired is the morning-line favorite for Saturday’s seven-furlong allowance, looking to rebound after finishing seventh in a salty edition of the Grade 3 Maryland Sprint last out. Sonny Inspired was an allowance winner at Parx this year.