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Dunbar Road on a path to victory in Mother Goose

6/28/19

Dunbar Road on a path to victory in Mother Goose

By NY Hot List Staff

With the Belmont Park meet in the homestretch, the pace will begin to pick up Saturday afternoon with one of the meet’s best-known stakes.

The $250,000 Mother Goose Stakes tops the penultimate Saturday card of the spring/summer meet which ends July 7.

With the July 6 Stars and Stripes Racing Festival providing some fireworks for the final week, the Mother Goose will provide a suitable build-up with an appearance by a rising star among the 3-year-old filly division.

Peter Brant’s Dunbar Road tops the field of six entered in the Mother Goose and seems a highly deserving 4-5 favorite in the Grade 2 stakes.

A winner of two of three career starts, trainer Chad Brown’s filly won those two starts by a combined 14 ¼ lengths. She made her lone stakes start in between those maiden and allowance wins and finished second by a half-length in the Gulfstream Park Oaks at Gulfstream Park March 30.

Yet even more revealing about her abilities was that she was the 5-1 second choice in the morning line for the prestigious Kentucky Oaks, a Grade 1 stakes in which she landed on the also-eligible list due to a lack of qualifying points and was ultimately scratched.

The 4-1 second choice in the Mother Goose, Jeltrin, did run in the Kentucky Oaks and finished 10th at 59-1 odds. After that, she rallied to finish third in the one-mile Grade 1 Acorn Stakes at Belmont – this time at 46-1 – and should be suited by the 1 1/16-mile distance of the Mother Goose.

“She worked well and is very adapted to Belmont, so everything looks OK to run,” owner/trainer Alexis Delgado said.

Jeltrin earned her way into the Kentucky Oaks by registering a stunning 51-1 upset in the Davona Dale Stakes at Gulfstream Park, beating a field that included the champion 2-year-old filly Jaywalk, who was unplaced at 2-5 odds.

Adding some intrigue is Wings of Dawn (5-1). Trained by Mark Casse, who won two legs of the recently concluded Triple Crown for 3-year-olds, she is coming off two sharp wins in allowance and maiden company.

The hitch is that they came on a synthetic surface at Woodbine and she has yet to race on dirt.

“A lot of people don’t know this, but Woodbine has a dirt track as well that you can train on, and you can see in her last few breezes that she’s been extremely good,” Casse said. “We’ve been preparing for the Mother Goose and we’re excited to see what she can do.”

The rest of the field of six includes Classic Fit (8-1), Safta (6-1) and Cassies Dreamer (10-1).

The Mother Goose will be eighth race on a nine-race card at Belmont Park.

The program also includes the $100,000 Perfect Sting Stakes as race seven.

Brown also has an odds-on choice in the Perfect Sting with 3-5 morning line favorite Uni, who is making her 2019 debut after a perfect, 4-for-4 season last year.

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