The focus will be on the fillies for race fans in New Jersey on Saturday, with the running of the Grade III $100,000 Monmouth Oaks for three-year-olds going 1 1/16 miles on the dirt. First run in 1871, the Monmouth Oaks were intended to be the United States version of the English Epsom Oaks and was originally run at a mile-and-a-half, and was won twice in the first six years by horses owned by August Belmont, for whom the famous New York track (and Belmont Stakes) is named.
Past winners of the Oaks include Silverbulletday, the 1998 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies champion, who would win 13 major stakes races over her career, and was named United States Champion two-year-old and three-year-old filly in 1998 and 1999. The 2000 winner, Spain, would go on to capture the Breeders’ Cup Distaff that same year as a 55-1 longshot, paying the second highest win total in Breeders’ Cup history. The following year, the Oaks again produced the BC Distaff winner, in Unbridled Elaine. In 1997, Blushing KD set the current race record time at 1:41.80.
The 2013 version of the Monmouth Oaks is expected to be a battle between Seaneen Girl and Makayla’s Angel. Seaneen Girl is a graded stakes winner, having taken the Grade II Golden Rod Stakes at Churchill Downs in November. A daughter of Spring At Last, she has yet to win in six tries in 2013, although she was third in the Fair Ground Oaks in March. Makayla’s Angel will be chasing her first graded-stakes victory, having recently run fourth in the Grade II Delaware Oaks, her fist time stepping up to stakes company.
The field is set for the $1 million Haskell, where Nyquist will be trying to re-stake his claim as the top three-year-old in the country.
On Sunday at Monmouth Park, the featured race is the $300,000 United Nations Stakes. Scheduled to be run at a mile and three-eighths on the turf, the Grade 1 event has drawn a field of ten colts and geldings.
On Sunday at Monmouth Park, the featured race is the $150,000 Pegasus Stakes, a key prep race for the Haskell Invitational (G1). The Grade 3 event will be contested at a mile and a sixteenth and has drawn a field of seven three-year-olds.
With five grade 1 races and a grade 2, the undercard for the June 11 Belmont stakes could be the best single day of racing on the calendar outside of the Breeders’ Cup.
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