Aunt Hattie’s strong debut points her out

NEW YORK – The late-year switch to stakes in warmer climes begins in earnest Saturday at Los Alamitos and Gulfstream.

Los Alamitos has a Grade 1 doubleheader of two important late-season stakes for 2-year-olds – the Los Alamitos CashCall Futurity and the Starlet, which are worth $300,000 each. At Gulfstream, the $300,000 Caribbean Classic tops an 11-race card entirely of stakes events.

Wait a While Stakes

This undercard stakes at Gulfstream includes Queen Medb, a lightly raced European filly of promise who gets Lasix and makes her first start for trainer Chad Brown.

Even though she’s a maiden facing winners, she ran well enough finishing a narrowly beaten second in Ireland in her first two starts that given her connections and this aggressive race placement you just know she’s going to be a handful. But I am a bit concerned that she lost so narrowly in both of her starts. It has me wondering if Queen Medb might be camera shy, and that has me looking elsewhere.

I’m going to look past an obvious alternative in A Bit Special, who is a neck short of being 3 for 3 and a double stakes winner over the course, and who was faster than the rest of this field of 2-year-old fillies speed figure-wise 2 1/2 months ago. Instead, I’m going with Aunt Hattie.

Aunt Hattie is trained by Hall of Famer Bill Mott, who doesn’t often win with firsttime starters. It’s not that Mott can’t win with firsters, it’s that he has always allowed horses to develop at their own pace. So when Mott does win with a firster, it’s usually a good sign for the horse, and Aunt Hattie was a first-out winner recently on the turf at Aqueduct.

Granted, Aunt Hattie enjoyed a perfect inside-out trip winning her debut on ground that had some cut, which she may have liked and others behind her might not have fancied. Still, Aunt Hattie was locked and loaded from the start, showing positional speed that says she can capitalize on her draw near the inside here, and scored with eye-catching authority.

Louisiana Champions Day Sprint

This is one of 10 stakes for Louisianabred Thoroughbred and Quarter Horses on Saturday’s card at Fair Grounds, and it finds Monte Man, who is unbeaten for his present connections, going for his eighth straight victory as a projected strong favorite.

Monte Man commands admiration. He can win on the lead or from well off the pace, and can win on fast tracks, turf, and slop, an important consideration considering the wet weather forecast for New Orleans. Monte Man will be tough, but I think Givemeaminit is simply a better horse.

Givemeaminit competed in six straight graded stakes races this year and last year he ran in four straight graded events, three of them Grade 1. Obviously, he will be taking a major class drop moving back in with statebreds. But more than that, it appears Givemeaminit is now focusing on one-turn races, which is good since all of his best performances came in one-turn races such as this one.

Those efforts include a fine second against a speed bias in his debut early in the 2017 Saratoga meet and a close third in the Grade 1 Hopeful later that summer, a near miss in last year’s Louisiana Futurity and then a drubbing of Louisiana-bred maidens last winter, and a third in the Grade 3 Pat Day last spring in the slop. And while Givemeaminit’s speed figures don’t exactly jump off the page, he is still not appreciably slower in that regard than the prolific Monte Man.

Starlet Stakes

The once-beaten two-time stakes winner Chasing Yesterday stretches out to two turns for the first time here, and the fact she’s a half-sister to Triple Crown winner American Pharoah would suggest it shouldn’t be a problem. But I’m still wondering. It’s interesting that Chasing Yesterday has had opportunities to route, and yet her first four starts were all sprints.

I’m also against Oxy Lady and Mother Mother. They each won a stakes last out, and the runner-up in those races showed little in last week’s Demoiselle.

Vibrance is the one for me. She was no match for Jaywalk and the good Bellafina in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies and Chandelier in her last two. But she at least hit the board, and she won routing three starts back.