La Sardane not a value play this time

If you missed the big La Sardane party during Belmont week perhaps you should decline the invitation to the $100,000 Perfect Sting Stakes, which supports the featured Mother Goose on the Saturday card at Belmont.

La Sardane, with some sneakily strong French form from 2017 and a lauded Belmont turf work, got pummeled at the betting windows in the Grade 3, $200,000 Intercontinental Stakes on June 7 and everybody cashed. Closing into a slow pace in a race otherwise dominated by front-runners, she won by a neck at just less than 9-2.

La Sardane will be an even

shorter price in the Perfect Sting, and though the stretch from seven furlongs to one mile should suit her, La Sardane figures to be a low-value proposition Saturday.

There are six others in the Perfect Sting (race 4, post time 3:09 Eastern), and La Sardane breaks from post 2 under Flavien Prat, who rode her in the Intercontinental. The California-based Neil Drysdale trains La Sardane for a Team Valor International partnership, and La Sardane has been in Kentucky or New York for a few months now.

La Sardane’s best French form came in one-turn miles, but while it’s hard to see her clunking Saturday there are potential upsetters.

Lido, a 4-year-old, was flattered Belmont Stakes Day when A Raving Beauty won the Grade 1 Just a Game. Lido’s most recent start was the May 12 Beaugay Stakes in which she finished third behind A Raving Beauty over a “good” course perhaps softer than ideal.

In the Lee and Pas de Soucis finished one-two in a May 24 allowance race going one mile at Belmont, and that race could move both horses forward Saturday. Feeling Bossy is a five-time Belmont turf winner, while Princess Gibraltar still could

have room to improve after just three starts since being imported from France.

No female turf stakes in New York would be complete without a Chad Brown entrant, in this case a filly named Thais.

Thais was kicking around France at the same time as La Sardane about a year ago, keeping some of the same company. Her one-mile stakes form in New York last fall fits nicely in the Perfect Sting.

“She had a break over the winter and came back nicely in an allowance race,” Brown said. “She likes the course and the mile, and one bend is her thing.”

And for a change in these turf races, Brown is the hunter rather than the hunted.