PAST PERFORMANCES Former Lynbrook race a jump start for fillies in the past

By Stan Hudy

Another race moved from Belmont Park to Saratoga Race Course for the expanded season, the Stillwater for New York breds was previously run as the Lynbrook.

The village of Lynbrook, New York is located just a few miles southeast of Belmont Park. Part of the Town of Hempstead, Lynbrook went by several names before adopting the current moniker, a play on the borough of Brooklyn. Lynbrook is perhaps best known to a national audience as the setting for the show Everybody Loves Raymond.

Among the non-fictional residents have been popular television personalities Bob “Captain Kangaroo” Keeshan and former Newsday sports columnist Tony Kornheiser of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption. During the 1920’s, there was a Lynbrook Stakes contested under selling conditions by the Metropolitan Jockey Club at Jamaica Racecourse.

Last year at Belmont Park, Maiden Beauty with Joel Rosario aboard won the then-Lynbrook Stakes by three and a-quarter lengths. The filly traveled to Saratoga the next month, finishing second in the Seeing the Ante Stakes and after finishing out of the money in her next three stakes trips she was second at Aqueduct in January in an allowance optional claiming race and found the winner’s circle last month at Belmont Park in an allowance race.

One of the most successful fillies to capture the Lynbrook was Wonderment in 2015 with Javier Castellano aboard winning by six and three-quarters, a sign of things to come. Wonderment would finish third in the Franklin Square Stakes at Aqueduct in February of 2016 before claiming the G3 Bourbonette Oaks at Turfway Park in April. The filly finished third at the G3 Bouwerie Stakes at Belmont, second in the Dogwood Stakes at Churchill Downs in September of that year and runner-up again in the Iroquois Stakes at Belmont Park.

In her three career starts at Sartoga, Wonderment finished third in the 2014 G2 Adirondack Stakes, finished a disappointing eighth in the 2015 G1 Test Stakes before returning to the winner’s circle in a 2016 allowance optional claiming race.

The winner’s circle didn’t allude Wonderment, winning the 2017 Dancin Renee Stakes at Belmont Park and the Arctic Queen Stakes at Finger Lakes later in the year.

Inaugural 2014 Lynbrook Stakes winner Wonder Gal earned less than $1 million dollars in 18 starts, breaking her maiden in the Lynbrook. The filly then went on to win the Empire Distaff Handicap at Belmont Park in 2015 and the Ladies Handicap at Aqueduct in 2017.