PACE OUTLOOK: On the quick side of moderate. CLOSE HATCHES will likely be hustled to get good position out of the 11 hole, and TIZ MIDNIGHT will be going from the 2 hole. It is, of course, possible that both hook up and even IOTAPA goes hard from post 3, but I think TIZ MIDNIGHT is on a generally clear early lead with only mild pressure from IOTAPA and CLOSE HATCHES. The X factor here is UNTAPABLE, and I'll explain why in a bit.
GENERAL OUTLOOK: Do you like balloons and cake on Halloween? I think this race will deliver some big prices. I am pretty solidly against UNTAPABLE and IOTAPA, and even CLOSE HATCHES seems to on a downward form cycle here — let's not forget ROYAL DELTA, Bill Mott's last great filly to suddenly take a turn for the worse, and that was it for her. DON'T TELL SOPHIA and BELLE GALLANTEY don't do a lot for me. This should be fun.
1. L'Armour de Ma Vie (Guyon/Brandt) 15-1: Has shown some affinity for artificial surfaces in the past, but has never run on dirt and doesn't seem to be best on the surface. I'm not even sure I would take her on turf against this bunch. 50-1 seems like the right price here.
2. Tiz Midnight (Espinoza/Baffert) 10-1: Generally looked atrocious in her last work. Has never been worse than third in seven starts as she's advanced up the class ladder, but she's also never went further than 1 1/16 miles and doesn't fit the profile of wanting to that far. I think there's enough pressure on her from IOTAPA and CLOSE HATCHES that she melts on the far turn.
3. Iotapa (Talamo/Sadler) 6-1: Bled in her last race. The works since have been solid enough, but not quite what she was doing before. I think she'll drift up in the betting as word is likely out on this one, and even then, she won't have my money. Her 10-length win in the Grade 1 Vanity earlier this year was probably the best race she'll ever run.
4. Belle Gallantey (J. Ortiz/Rodriguez) 6-1: A tricky sort. She clearly benefited from a dawdling pace in her last race, as she opened up 2.5 lengths by the first call and ultimately won by 8 over STOP CHARGING MARIA. She also walked on the lead in the Delaware Handicap, and inbetween, she threw a clunker in the slop at Saratoga. She's no joke, but it's hard to view any of those races as truly representative efforts of what she'll do Friday. Instead, I'll go back to the Ogden Phipps on June 7, when CLOSE HATCHES beat fifth-place BELLE GALLANTEY by all of 1.75 lengths. That effort was good, but not good enough to win this race. So if she can't walk on the lead, can she win? I don't think so.
5. Unbridled Forever (Velasquez/Stewart) 20-1: I bet this horse intermittently throughout the year, and she still hasn't won since January 18. She just doesn't seem quite good enough here, although perhaps you could make the case she's ready to fire second off the layoff.
6. Stanwyck (Nakatani/Shirreffs) 20-1: I honestly don't know if STANWYCK can win this race. I'd like to think so, but I don't know that they'll be going fast enough up front to counteract the generally speed favoring nature of the strip. With that said, one my strongest opinions of the weekend is that STANWYCK will finish in the top 3. Her fourth-place finish last time out was compromised by a slow pace, and her two prior runs were potentially compromised by the mud. Dial it back to earlier this year at Santa Anita and she was third by half a length to IOTAPA in the Santa Margarita on March 15. She was third behind a slow paced IOTAPA in the Santa Maria on February 15. And she started the year second by a head in the Pasadena. With enough pace and a dry track, I am all but certain she will outrun her odds. Again, I'm not sure she's good enough to win, but she will be coming late, and Nakatani is skilled with closers.
7. Don't Tell Sophia (Rocco Jr./Sims) 5-1: I'm not sure what to do with the Spinster. The pace was slow, but DON'T TELL SOPHIA had rallied from 10 lengths back to take the lead at the top of the stretch. It was impressive, but it was also the best race she has ever run. She has won more than STANWYCK, but she also hasn't faced quite the competition that STANWYCK has. 5-1 seems like a serious underlay on this track in particular, especially given a so-so workout.
8. Valiant Emilia (Bejarano/G. Mandella) 20-1: Is she good enough? Probably not. But here again, given my lack of interest in some of the favorites in this race, this Peruvian entrant may be worth a shot. She gets great connections in Mandella and Bejarano, and her workouts have been good enough, so ... why not?
9. Ria Antonia (Lopez/Amoss) 15-1: She's the buzz horse all of a sudden after people shit on her campaign the rest of the year. I was high on her back in the spring, and she obviously didn't deliver ... in fact, she has only crossed the wire first in one of her 13 races (her BC win last year was via DQ). Disposing of CLOSE HATCHES was nice, but again, that was just such a weird race in every way that I'm drawing a line through it. That said, she has run races that would be halfway competitive with these, so I don't mind her.
10. Untapable (Napravnik/Asmussen) 5-2: She has easily been the best three-year-old filly this year. But after finishing the month of June with an unblemished record and never winning by less than four lengths, she tried the Haskell and was trounced (not much shame there), and then was all-out to beat SWEET REASON around two turns (not SWEET REASON's bread and butter at all). Some folks have raved about her workouts — "jaw-dropping" was used — but I truly felt like she looked far too aggressive early. She has a wide post, she didn't run a step last year at Santa Anita, and she may be a pace factor if she's anywhere near as aggressive as she was in her work. Why would you want to bet on that at 5-2 or likely less?
11. Close Hatches (Rosario/Mott) 3-1: I've been a fan of this filly since the beginning and backed her in almost every one of her nine wins (in 13 tries). But that last race was just so ... peculiar and bad. Mott said that when fillies and mares are done running, they are DONE RUNNING (he said this about ROYAL DELTA in particular), and I can't help but wonder if she's just done at this point.
SYSTEM PLAYS: NONE! I have no system plays on this race, which generally means the computer thinks the morning line is pretty much fair. The closest (i.e. most expected value, even though it's still negative) to being plays are (in order):
CLOSE HATCHES 3-1
UNTAPABLE 5-2
BELLE GALLANTEY 6-1
RIA ANTONIA 15-1
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