Distance suits Honey Pants

Honey Pants has found her sweet spot racing in short turf sprints this year and with some racing luck can win her first stakes in the $100,000 Goldwood on Saturday at Monmouth Park.

Four-year-old Honey Pants was perfectly fine in grass races between six and seven furlongs during her 2020 and 2021 campaigns, but after being cut back to shorter sprints this year – and adding blinkers to her raceday equipment this spring – the filly has raised her game.

The 5 1/2-furlong Goldwood for older fillies and mares should suit her, though traffic in this overflow field could pose a problem for inside-drawn Honey Pants, who comes from off the pace.

Fourteen were entered in the Goldwood (race 11 of 12, post time 3:47 p.m. Eastern), with a dozen in the field’s main body,

Justalittleviolent entered main track only, and Stop War the lone also-eligible.

Seven horses have a TimeformUS early pace number of 98 or higher, with Robin Sparkles and Bay Storm perhaps the speed of the speed, and the Goldwood at least should unfold at an honest tempo, if not a fast one. That’s good news for Honey Pants, who would find a muddling pace and a generally messy race difficult to overcome.

On May 20, in the $100,000 The Very One at Pimlico, Honey Pants broke slightly slow into stride, got squeezed back in the first furlong, twice had to come through narrow holes after she began rallying into contention, and finished fastest in the race with a 11.27-second final furlong to come closest to catching pacesetting winner Can the Queen.

Her race two starts ago, a Gulfstream Park allowance win, was even better, Honey Pants closing strongly to zip past favored Running Memories, who since has sharply won a pair of open turf-sprint allowance races in Florida. Joe Bravo, who rode the daughter of Bahamian Squall to a secondplace finish in April 2021, picks up the mount for trainer Christophe Clement.

Robin Sparkles won the offturf Politely Stakes on May 28 at Monmouth, her first start back from a lengthy layoff, though the mare is considerably better on grass than dirt. Based in New York with trainer Bruce Brown, Robin Sparkles, whether through coincidence or not, has a 6-for-6 record – going wire to wire every time – in races where she’s started on Lasix, as she does Saturday. Robin Sparkles, however, carries 124 pounds under the race’s allowance conditions, giving six pounds to several capable opponents, including Honey Pants.

Bay Storm, based at Monmouth with trainer Jonathan

Thomas, finished a well-beaten second in a pair of second-level turf-sprint allowance races in Kentucky this spring, but has the speed figures and general profile to rate a win chance.

Kentucky-based Bout Time also merits a long look in her stakes debut. Trained by Cherie DeVaux, Bout Time was slightly disappointing in a May 24 defeat at odds-on, but in her other two starts this year she mashed turf-sprint foes, thumping maidens at Fair Grounds and first-level allowance opponents on May 15 at Churchill Downs.

Trainer Shug McGaughey, who ran one-two June 18 at Monmouth in the Eatontown Stakes, a filly and mare turf route, entered Champagne Lady, whose solid turf form all has come in route races. She’s drawn in post 12 and could find herself stuck wide on the turn.