Laurelin continued her perfect record with a 2-length success in Saturday evening’s Saratoga Oaks. This race was only inaugurated in 2019 as part of the Turf Tiara series, but the first point to make is that a winning time of 1:52.60 made Laurelin the fastest winner so far, 0.7s quicker than the previous best (Antoinette 2020). She certainly had help, with fast early fractions set by Opulent Restraint and Totally Justified, who reached the turn with opening splits of 11.34 and 12.03s. That helped to set the race up, but once asked to close, Laurelin easily made her ground despite racing 3-wide around the turn and when asked to lengthen, she reached a race peak average stride length of 7.69m in the penultimate furlong, hitting the front with the fastest furlong of the race in 11.32s for the penultimate split. The data does show that both the 2nd and 3rd ran faster final furlong splits and recorded quicker run-out speeds, but Laurelin had the race sewn up by then and there is no reason to think that she was in any way favoured by either her race position or the pace setup. A finishing speed of 102.41% was the highest in the race, but the runner-up, Evershed, recorded the longest average stride length in the field (25.59 ft) and had every chance to run down the winner if she was good enough to. 

This was a first step into graded company for Graham Motion’s filly, but she had won 3 stakes races prior to this and appeared to take the step up in class in her stride. The beaten favourite, Opulent Restraint, finished 3rd in the Belmont Oaks last month and although she did too much in the early stages of this race, she still ran well enough to build the form around her and she ran a final time that would have been enough to win the previous 6 renewals of this race. I’d also like to add a short note about the 4th placed Go Go Boots, who was making her first start in the US for Miguel Clement after switching from John and Thady Gosden. She finished 3rd behind Whirl in the Musidora in May and 4th in the Ribblesdale at Royal Ascot, so she also brought a reasonably high level of form into this race. Although the tight turns of Saratoga appeared to be a slight culture shock at first, she finished her race well, with only Laurelin running a quicker penultimate furlong than the 11.49s than she recorded. She appeared to be eased in the final 50-yards by Jose Ortiz and hopefully everything is ok, because she was finishing strongly and showed more than enough here to suggest that she could win a graded contest on the turf at some point. Whilst it’s important to keep an eye on the placed horses, there is no doubt that the most likely improver in this race is the winner and it will be interesting to see how high Laurelin can reach this year.