Canadian/Ontario-bred three-year-olds MISSION OF JOY and KALIK are major contenders in Saturday’s $500,000 Fasig-Tipton Belmont Oaks Invitational (G1) and $750,000 Belmont Invitational Derby (G1) respectively, each race at 10 furlongs over the inner turf course at Belmont Park.
The Belmont Oaks Invitational kicks off the Fasig-Tipton Fillies Turf Triple series, which is followed by the 1 3/16-mile Grade 3, $400,000 Fasig-Tipton Saratoga Oaks Invitational on August 4 at Saratoga Race Course and the Grade 3, $350,000 Fasig-Tipton Jockey Club Oaks Invitational on September 16 going 11 furlongs at Belmont at the Big A.
Both Graham Motion and Chad Brown will send out a pair of formidable contenders, with the former saddling graded/group winners MISSION OF JOY [post 1, Tyler Gaffalione] and Speirling Beag [post 3, John Velazquez].
RyZan Sun Racing and Madaket Stables’ dual graded stakes winner Mission of Joy enters from a 1 1/2-length triumph in the Grade 3 Regret on June 3 at Churchill Downs, where she earned a career-best 90 Beyer Speed Figure.
This followed a troubled third in the Grade 2 Edgewood on May 5 at Churchill Downs, where the Kitten’s Joy chestnut clipped heels in upper stretch, was tipped out a path wide and managed to grab third place. She captured the Grade 3 Florida Oaks on March 11 at Tampa Bay Downs three starts back.
Mission of Joy spent the past few months training at Keeneland before shipping to Motion’s primary division at Fair Hill Training Center, where she breezed five furlongs in 1:01.80 on Sunday.
“She was unlucky at Churchill a couple starts back, but she sure made up for it last time,” said Motion. “She really had the worst of it when she stumbled that day. She came back well, and she shipped back from Kentucky in good order.”
Bred in Ontario by Sam-Son Farm, Mission of Joy is out of the Smart Strike mare Smart Mission whose half-sister Irish Mission was a dual Sovereign Award winner in Canada.
European invaders The Foxes and Silver Knott take on formidable U.S.-based opponents Kalik and Webslinger in the Belmont Derby Invitational.
King Power Racing’s The Foxes arrived at Belmont Park on Friday and cleared quarantine to trot over the dirt training track on Sunday in preparation for his U.S. debut.
Trained by Andrew Balding, the Churchill bay captured the one-mile Group 2 Royal Lodge in September at Newmarket to close out a two-win juvenile campaign. He made his seasonal debut in April with a runner-up effort to Indestructible in the Group 3 Craven traveling one-mile at Newmarket ahead of a surging neck score over Group 3-winner White Birch in the 1 5/16-mile Group 2 Dante on May 18 at York.
The Foxes arrives off a fifth-place finish in the 12-furlong Group 1 Epsom Derby on June 3 where he stumbled at the break and advanced to third with a furlong to run before flattening.
Four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Chad Brown will seek his first Belmont Derby score when he sends out Robert V. LaPenta, e Five Racing Thoroughbreds and Madaket Stables’ Kalik [post 8, Irad Ortiz, Jr.] and Klaravich Stables’ Redistricting [post 10, Flavien Prat].
Kalik, an Ontario-bred by Collected, is a perfect 3-for-3 this campaign led by a frontrunning score last out in the nine-furlong Grade 2 Pennine Ridge where he set splits of 24.69 seconds, 49.17 and 1:13.01 over the firm ground en route to a one-length score in a final time of 1:47.85.
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