Jockey Club Oaks (G3)
"Fionn"
The Jockey Club Oaks at Aqueduct in New York had been dominated by European horses since its inception in 2019, with Charlie Appleby landing the last 2 renewals with Eternal Hope and Beautiful Love. However, with no European presence in 2025, it was left to the home team and they served up a fantastic battle between Fionn and Laurelin. With market SPs of 2.2 and 2.25 respectively, the betting suggested that this was a match race and once the pace lifted with 3 furlongs to run, that is exactly what they served up. A winning time of 2:17.22 was the slowest winning time in the history of this race, albeit in just its 6th renewal and given that the early leader and eventual 3rd, Don’t Jinx It, took 49.82s to cover the opening half a mile, it is perhaps not surprising that the race had a finishing speed of 104%. In fact, the field got all the way to the 8th furlong before any of them clocked a sub-12s furlong (Unmerited Favor 11.91s). With that figure in mind, we can highlight that this race essentially developed into a 3 furlong dash and as a result, both the runner-up and more importantly the winner, have produced exceptional performances to make ground from the rear and the fact that they were the only 2 horses to record a top speed above 40 mph correlates directly with that.
Fionn has now won 7 of her 10 career starts, including 6 wins in 2025, with the highlight being her defeat of Nitrogen in the G1 Belmont Oaks at Saratoga in the Summer. She was behind Laurelin when only 4th in the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes at Keeneland in October, but on that occasion she was simply too far back in the early stages. Coming with a late challenge, she was the fastest horse over the final quarter of a mile (23.41s) and recorded the best run-out speed (36.91 mph) but it was all in vain. Flavien Prat did learn from that experience though and asked her to quicken at the end of the back straight on Saturday afternoon and she ranked in the top 2 for each of her final 4 furlong splits. Despite being forced very wide off the home turn, once into the home straight, she reached her peak race average stride length figure of 25.84 ft in the penultimate furlong and readily came past Laurelin in the home straight. The Geodata from TPD shows that she was as much as 3m wider than Laurelin at the peak of the home bend, but this made little difference and if anything, it would suggest that Fionn was value for further than a winning margin of 0.07s (half a length) would suggest. Fionn needs a patient ride and as a result, there is always a chance that the race won’t play out in the manner that she requires. The race at Keeneland in October is a very good example of that, but if you make allowances for the fact that she will occasionally be caught behind a slow pace, you reach the conclusion that Brad Cox is training an exceptional Filly. The fact that she was able to overcome such a slow pace bias around the tight turns of the turf course at Aqueduct is testament to that point.
Laurelin is also a top class filly in her own right and her record of 5 wins from 7 starts confirms that. Although she lost her unbeaten record at Keeneland and Fionn has now reversed the form between the pair of them on Saturday, she still ran to a very high standard. With a peak average stride length of 25.25 ft, she was simply vulnerable to her longer striding rival in the closing stages and the speed data suggests that the stride length is the only significant difference between the pair. Her top speed of 40.15 mph was just 0.03 mph and there was a similarly minute difference between their run-out speeds (0.34 mph). As a daughter of Zarak, this 11 furlong trip should be well within range and whilst Fionn is likely to uphold this form if they meet again at this distance, there are still plenty of races to be won with Laurelin, who finished significantly clear of the remainder of the field.