Awake At Midnyte’s Wednesday work. Coady Photography
Awake at Midnyte, Blue Stripe, Search Results, Secret Oath
Breeders’ Cup Notes/Edited
LEXINGTON, Ky.—Longines Breeders’ Cup Distaff (G1) contender Awake At Midnyte galloped 1 1/8 m Wednesday morning over a fast track at Keeneland with exercise rider Connor Murray aboard. Trained by Doug O’Neill and owned by Reddam Racing, this will be the first Breeders’ Cup start for the 3 yo filly.
“She just needs to get a trouble-free, clean ride to let her run her race and have some horse to finish,” O’Neill said. “Whether she’s fast enough to win I don’t know, but I think she’s fast enough to hit the board. She’s a top filly that I think deserves the opportunity. She’s training really well going into it, but we’ll need a lot of things to go our way for sure.”
Awake At Midnyte has made one previous start at Keeneland in the 2022 Ashland Stakes and was fourth, beaten by fellow Longines Distaff contender Nest.
Pozo De Luna’s Blue Stripe (ARG) galloped 1 1/2m at 9 o’clock with Efrain Lopez aboard for trainer Marcelo Polanco.
Blue Stripe will be making her fourth start of the year in Saturday’s Distaff. She returned to the races April 30 following a seventh-place finish in last year’s Distaff and won the Santa Margarita right off the bench.
“The break after the Breeders’ Cup last year was by design,” Polanco said. “We wanted to keep her fresh.”
And she will be fresh for Saturday’s race, which will be her first start since winning the Clement L. Hirsch on Aug. 6 at Del Mar.
“There was one other race in between (the Zenyatta at Santa Anita Oct. 2), but we didn’t want to do too much,” Polanco said.
Hector Berrios, who was aboard for the Del Mar victory, has the mount Saturday.
Klaravich Stables’ Search Results galloped about 1m on Keeneland’s dirt track Wednesday morning with trainer Chad Brown observing. One of many formidable contenders in the Longines Distaff, she must step up at the Grade 1 level around two turns in order to do so. The daughter of Flatter owns two narrow losses in 9f, Grade 1 affairs, the G1 Personal Ensign last out.
Despite being a top-level winner around one turn, when taking the 8f Acorn, Brown was not tempted to drop her back in trip for the 7f Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Sprint, a race in which he trains morning line favorite Goodnight Olive.
“I think 7 furlongs is just too short for her,” Brown said. “I have Goodnight Olive in there and I don’t think she can run with her. There are other good horses in there besides Goodnight Olive, too. If I ran her at seven at this point, she’d be off the bridle the whole time. We are just going to have to work out a trip and hope she stays better at Keeneland.”
For a report on what Secret Oath did Wednesday morning preparing for the Distaff, Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas pointed to the filly’s exercise rider, French jockey Mickaelle Michel.
Michel, a globetrotting 27-year-old, relocated to America this year. Lukas has had her up on Secret Oath for three breezes at Churchill Downs since the 3yo filly returned to Kentucky following a third-place finish in the Cotillion at Parx on Sept. 24. This week, Michel is riding her during morning gallops.
“I think it’s good for him because I know the filly,” she said, “and it’s really good for me to participate at the Breeders’ Cup.”
In addition to the exercise duty, Michel will ride the Lukas-trained No Guilt in the second race Friday. It will be her first time on the grounds of a Breeders’ Cup.
Michel said the Kentucky Oaks winner felt good to her during the filly’s opening tour of the Keeneland surface. The Distaff will be Secret Oath’s first race at the Lexington track.
Secret Oath. Coady Photography
“She was fresh this morning and exciting,” Michel said. “She’s really lovely to train. She’s easy. She’s a perfect horse. She’s good and she’s really easy to train.”
Due to wet track conditions at Churchill Downs Monday, Lukas opted to skip Secret Oath’s final half-mile breeze for the Distaff. During her time on the track Wednesday, Lukas had Michel ask Secret Oath to briefly pick up the pace.
“We gave her a routine gallop, but from the quarter pole to the seven-eighths pole, we let her zip a little, just let her take a deep breath,” Lukas said.
Michel was the top apprentice in France in 2018, but started traveling after finding that she could not get enough mounts in her home country. She rode on the second-tier National Association of Racing circuit in Japan in 2019 and picked up experience on dirt. The pandemic slowed her career and she and her husband moved to the U.S. in late spring. She had her first mount on May 26 at Churchill Downs and has five wins from 83 starts.
Luis Saez will ride Secret Oath from post three in the Distaff. She is 15-1 on the morning line.
