Ky. Oaks winners set to clash

The $2 million Breeders’ Cup Distaff is one of just two Breeders’ Cup races that did not oversubscribe at the pre-entry deadline on Monday, with just 12 fillies and mares under consideration for the Nov. 3 race. But what it lacks in quantity it makes up for in serious quality, as the field will be led by Kentucky Oaks winners Abel Tasman and Monomoy Girl, both looking to rebound from recent setbacks.

Abel Tasman won the Kentucky Oaks and finished second in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff en route to a divisional Eclipse Award last year and has returned to be a multiple Grade 1 winner this season. However, she burned bridge jumpers when finishing a surprising fifth last out in the Grade 1 Zenyatta Stakes at Santa Anita, when she may have been fighting off a virus that was going through trainer Bob Baffert’s barn. Meanwhile, the 3-yearold Monomoy Girl won four consecutive Grade 1 races this year, all for trainer Brad Cox, taking the Ashland Stakes, Kentucky Oaks, Acorn Stakes, and Coaching Club American Oaks. She was disqualified to second in what would have been a fifth straight Grade 1 in last month’s Cotillion Stakes at Parx for interference in the stretch. The Distaff will be the first start against older horses for Monomoy Girl, who is based at Churchill Downs.

“She’s definitely, I think, bigger, stronger, hopefully faster now than she was in the spring,” Cox said.

“This is home for her, and we don’t have to put her on a plane or van or send her anywhere. It’s one less hurdle we have to jump, her walking out of her own stall on Breeders’ Cup Day.”

Led by those two, there are seven Grade 1 winners among the 12 Distaff pre-entries, with Blue Prize, La Force, Midnight Bisou, Vale Dori, and Wow Cat rounding out the group. Midnight Bisou was elevated to first in the Cotillion with Monomoy Girl’s disqualification, while Vale Dori, also trained by Baffert, won the Zenyatta when Abel Tasman faltered. Vale Dori and Abel Tasman have breezed together twice since then.

“Both went very well,” Baffert said after the first of those two works. “Whatever Abel had, she’s over it. She’s back, and I’m very happy with her.”

Fellow pre-entrants Champagne Problems, Mopotism, Verve’s Tale, and Wonder Gadot are all graded stakes winners. Mopotism has second preference in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, which oversubscribed with 18 pre-entries. Graded stakes-placed longshot Fuhriously Kissed has first preference in the Filly and Mare Turf, which has 15 preentrants.