Secret Oath ready to fire fresh in Azeri

This being Derby prep season, the Tampa Bay Derby takes center stage this second Saturday in March. Tapit Trice makes his stakes debut, never has been two turns, ran on Lasix in his breakthrough performance and now races without it, and looks like an odds-on favorite. He’s the sort of horse you’re supposed to play against. I just can’t find anyone to beat him.

Minor upsets look plausible in three other spots, coast to coast.

Azeri

The Beholder Mile at Santa Anita is the Grade 1 in the older filly and mare dirtroute division, but the Grade 2 Azeri is the tougher race.

As a charter member of the Clairiere fan club, it’s great to see her back as a 5-yearold. Going into the Azeri, she’s clearly the best horse, but there’s about zero chance, with a long season in front of her and a major Grade 1 goal next month, that Clairiere is going to be at her best Saturday. She can win anyway – but doesn’t have to.

Numbers-wise, Interstatedaydream fits the spot if one projects natural improvement from age 3 to 4, but her best 2022 showings came against lesser lights in her division. She’ll be part of a solid pace along with Lovely Ride and, to a lesser extent, Hidden Connection.

Clairiere comfortably handled Secret Oath in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, but I’m going with Secret Oath to turn the tables. Secret Oath didn’t get a good trip in the Distaff, moving wide and too early into a solid pace, fading the final furlong. But I doubt she was ready to win that day, regardless of trip.

I think Secret Oath got off track at Saratoga, training and racing during the early part of the meet over a very deep, laboring surface. She looked totally gassed at the quarter pole of the Coaching Club American Oaks. I don’t believe Secret Oath ever really was right again after that.

Last winter and spring at Oaklawn Park, the filly really was right. Secret Oath loves the Oaklawn surface and might have won the Arkansas Derby if not for a very questionable ride. I’ve not seen any of her works, but the pattern and times suggest she has come back from a winter freshening ready to build off her Kentucky Oaks victory and tough-luck fourth in the Preakness.

I think she gets first run on Clairiere, and it won’t surprise me if she’s the sharper horse coming right off the bench.

Beholder Mile

The SoCal fillies and mares don’t strike me as a serious Grade 1 bunch. Desert Dawn could have a nice season, but she needs more than one mile. Fun to Dream easily won her only route, but that was a mere first-level allowance. I’d bet she turns out to be, at heart, a sprinter-miler.

The natural inclination would be to turn to Grade 1 winner Pauline’s Pearl. Two years in a row she has shown excellent winter form. The turnback in trip to a twoturn mile suits her, and I expect Pauline’s Pearl to bring it as the second choice.

I’ll dig one level deeper with A Mo Reay, a year younger and with far more upside than Pauline’s Pearl. Purchased at auction for $400,000 last November, A Mo Reay, who showed ability from the start, is 2 for 2 with trainer Brad Cox. She beat lesser foes in the off-turf Pago Hop at Fair Grounds, but took a solid forward step winning the Bayakoa, where she had to run down the sharp Lovely Ride, who had gotten away with comfortable fractions.

I’m guessing A Mo Reay’s subsequent works hinted to Cox she’s got another forward move in her – and that’s all it would take.

Florida Oaks

Free Look, who did encounter some traffic in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf, is formidable, but I like Allamericanbeauty to upset the Florida Oaks.

That was an eye-catching last-start maiden win, the filly’s second outing and first on grass. Racing inside and among horses, she had to come through a very tight hole to find room in upper stretch, and after clearing that traffic, was confronted with an outside-closing rival who had all the momentum. Allamericanbeauty didn’t just turn back that horse, she appeared to win with something still in the tank.

Shug McGaughey, hardly a trainer to just take shots, goes maiden to a graded stakes, and I agree with Shug – this filly can improve enough to contend.