With two stars out, Fantasy up for grabs
Circumstances have stripped the 2022 Fantasy Stakes of some of its customary luster.
For one thing, Oaklawn’s leading 3-year-old filly is going in the Arkansas Derby. Secret Oath, winner of three meet races by a combined 23 lengths, is the 9-5 program favorite against eight males in Saturday’s $1.25 million Grade 1 Kentucky Derby prep.
Trainer Wayne Lukas’ move left the Fantasy door open in a race that has produced 10 champions, a Kentucky Derby runner-up and two winners of the Preakness. Then came the news that Grade 1 winner and 2-1 program favorite Eda would scratch after running a temperature Monday.
That leaves eight fillies to divvy up the 170 Kentucky Oaks qualifying points available in the Grade 3 $600,000 Fantasy at a mile and sixteenth. Secret Oath, with 60 points from winning the Grade 3 Honeybee and the Martha Washington, may use the May 7 race at Churchill Downs as a fallback position if her Arkansas Derby does not live up to expectations.
Two-time reigning Eclipse Award winner Brad Cox entered Bubble Rock (3-1), a multiple stakes winner for owner-breeder John Ed Anthony of Hot Springs. Bubble Rock hopes to transfer her form to dirt after winning Belmont Park’s Grade 3 Matron in October on turf and Turfway Park’s Cincinnati Trophy March 5 on synthetic. Ricardo Santana Jr., surprisingly without an Arkansas Derby mount, rides Bubble Rock.
“We’ll see how it goes,” said Cox, also represented in the Fantasy by eight-length Oaklawn maiden winner Mariah’s Fortune. “It’s a good spot, 3-year-old fillies, dirt. … A little bit of the unknown if she’ll take to it, but we liked her well enough breezing her on the dirt to send her to Saratoga once we got there. I thought she kind of struggled a little bit at Saratoga on the deeper surfaces. We’re hoping for a good tight track on Saturday.”
In the season that he became the track’s career leader in races won by an owner, Anthony seeks his first Fantasy victory since Aztec Hill in 1993 for the former Loblolly (now Shortleaf) Stable and trainer Tom Bohannon.
Dream Girl and Yuugiri are rematched in the Fantasy after running one-two in Churchill Downs’ Grade 2 Golden Rod last fall. A fifth-place Golden Rod finish marked Secret Oath’s last defeat.
Trainer Robertino Diodoro hopes Dream Lith improves on a sixth-place finish in the Grade 2 Rachel Alexandra Feb. 19 at Fair Grounds at the Fantasy distance.
Ramon Vazquez rides Dream Lith from the rail post. Her three Oaklawn works since arriving in early March include two “bullet” drills, one a half-mile in 47.40 seconds March 26 that “actually gave me goosebumps,” said Diodoro, Oaklawn’s leading trainer in 2020 and second last year and in the current standings.
About the New Orleans race, the filly’s 3-year-old debut, Diodoro said, “There was a horse that got pulled up and she was kind of behind that horse. It was a very speed-biased track. First time off a long layoff. I really feel we were one or two weeks short going into it. But at the same time, Ramon said down the lane at Fair Grounds, she was running. They just weren’t coming back to her.”
Yuugiri, third to Secret Oath in the mile-and-sixteenth Honeybee, needs a strong Fantasy showing to make the Oaks, trainer Rodolphe Brisset said.
“She needs to run first or second,” Brisset said. “If she runs second (40 points), it would have to be a strong second. We don’t want to run, just to run in the Oaks. The dam of Yuugiri (Yuzuru) passed a couple of weeks ago, so she’s very valuable for the family. It’s very important to first win a stakes with her and then make sure she’s safe and sound because the dam passed. We will only take a strong look at the Oaks if we think she can run onetwo-three in the Oaks. If it’s a distant second (in the Fantasy) and feel like we have no point in wasting a race, we will pass — even if she qualifies — and find the right race to be a black-type winner.”
Lining up jockey Florent Geroux, normally the go-to rider for Cox, aboard Yuugiri, Brissett later sends out the highly regarded and undefeated We the People in the Arkansas Derby.
Also in the Fantasy, first won by Knitted Gloves in 1973, are Beguine (Francisco Arrieta), I Feel the Need (Alex Canchari), Magic Circle (Jose Lezcano),
Mariah’s Fortune (Flavien Prat) and Hearty Constitution (Martin Garcia). Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen entered Magic Circle, a January stakes winner at Aqueduct, after winning his record fourth Fantasy last year with Pauline’s Pearl.
The Fantasy earned national attention with the 1977 victory of Our Mims and that of Davona Dale two years later, both future champions trained by Calumet Farm. Eight Belles, owned by the late Rick Porter and trained by Larry Jones, finished second in Big Brown’s Kentucky Derby after winning the 2008 Fantasy. Rachel Alexandra, the 2009 winner in her penultimate race for trainer Hal Wiggins, and Blind Luck (Jerry Hollendorfer) received yearend Eclipse Awards as 3-year-old filly champions.
The 2020 Fantasy produced champion Swiss Skydiver (matching Rachel Alexandra’s Fantasy-Preakness double) and Kentucky Oaks winner Shedaresthedevil, co-owned by Staton Flurry of Hot Springs.
Listed as the 10th of 13 races, the Fantasy is set for 5:16 p.m. Three other stakes dot the Derby Day card with the first race at noon and the infield open, weather permitting.