00:00In the fifth race on Saturday at Churchill Downs, it's called the Monomoy Girl Overnight.
00:05So in this race, she's going to be really tough, but she's going to be making her first start since November.
00:11We also got some news, David, that you just passed along to me, too, about running away, right?
00:16Yeah, one of our colleagues at the Daily Racing Forum, Marcus Hirsch, reported that running away, not going to start here.
00:21Her trainer, Wesley Ward, entered in this race, just trying to look around and see if anybody good showed up in here.
00:26Well, somebody did, last year's champion, immersive, and I don't think too many of these fillies want to face her.
00:32So it'll just likely be a field of five or even smaller showing up on Saturday.
00:38We kick things off with the one, Princess Aaliyah, who is a stakes winner, but she's coming off of a couple of really disappointing efforts in her last few.
00:45Off of that stakes win in April, she stepped up into graded stakes company, and when she's faced tougher horses, she's just been a little bit overmatched.
00:54She has. Those graded stakes races just seem like they're a little bit too tough for her.
00:59The problem is, even as she's dropping down into a lower-level stakes race here, she's still catching a graded stakes quality rival, or maybe two of them, in immersive and take charge m'lady.
01:09So I don't know how much class relief Princess Aaliyah is actually getting in this spot.
01:13It seems like this might still be a tough field for her to handle.
01:16The number two is Immersive, and she's actually owned by the same ownership group of Sovereignty who won the Kentucky Derby.
01:24We saw her come back and win the Belmont.
01:26So they've had great success this year.
01:27And then how about her trainer, Brad Cox?
01:29He had the winner of the Kentucky Oaks who had been undefeated up until just recently when she got defeated for the first time.
01:38So now she's no longer undefeated.
01:40Don't worry about it, David.
01:41Let's bring in another undefeated Philly off the bench, Immersive, who's going to be making her first start of her three-year-old season.
01:48So just shows you how loaded the trainer, Brad Cox, barn is.
01:52And this is the Philly, Immersive, winning the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Phillies right here as she was favored.
01:58Yeah, Brad Cox had such a deep bench among that group of two-year-old Phillies last year.
02:03And even though Immersive was crowned the champion, I know there were a lot of people that felt that maybe she was the second or even the third best
02:08of his trio of top two-year-old Phillies last year.
02:12And, you know, she did feel like she was kind of underrated despite the fact that she won this Breeders' Cup towards the end of last season.
02:18She went to the sidelines, reportedly had some bone bruising.
02:21They wanted to give her some time for all of that to heal.
02:23So now they're going to target a campaign in the second half of the season.
02:26And maybe Goodyear, who was so good early on, is going to pass the baton to her, Godolphin, Brad Cox, trained stablemate in Immersive.
02:33Because if she can take that step forward from two to three, she still has a chance to be one of the best horses in her division.
02:40And I'm sure they'd love to start things off with a victory on Saturday.
02:43The number three is Anna's Promise.
02:45She changed barns at the end of last year.
02:48So this year, she's been in the Carlos David barn for her last three starts, actually, March and May.
02:56And she actually has really improved.
02:58I think she's been very good in those races since.
03:01She was fifth in the Kentucky Oaks, David, and she didn't really run poorly that day in a field of 13.
03:05So she does seem like she's moving in the right direction.
03:09She has a nice running style, too, where she could sit pretty close.
03:12She has some speed.
03:13I feel pretty positively about her as a horse overall, but she will be facing a couple other really serious rivals in here, like the two immersive and even to the outside with take charge of Milady.
03:25And I will say, if running away comes out as expected, it could really help Anna's Promise from a tactical standpoint, because she's got a lot of early speed.
03:33And she wasn't able to make the front end in the last couple of races.
03:35But if she has the lone speed, she might be able to get very comfortable up front.
03:40And she ran deceptively well in the Kentucky Oaks, given how that pace fell apart.
03:44The horse that she was chasing, La Cara, came back and won the grade one Acorn on the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival last week.
03:50So that was actually a pretty good effort last time.
03:53Minnesota Money is the four.
03:55She comes off a win, but she's going to really have to step up, David, based on what she's been doing to compete with a horse like Immersive or Take Charge Milady.
04:03Yeah, she's just very tough to make a case for.
04:05She did win going two turns on the dirt last time, but it was against basically a group of turf horses or those that wanted to run on the grass and just got rained onto the dirt course.
04:15I would not be shocked to see a really good effort from Take Charge Milady, because this was a filly who, moving into the Kentucky Oaks, she had some small physical issues.
04:24I think they said there was a quarter crack, which is kind of comparable to like a hangnail.
04:27So she didn't go into that race with everything going well.
04:30And then in that race, it was a wet track.
04:33I think we can be forgiving about it.
04:34She should bounce back with a lot better effort in this smaller field here.
04:39So what do you think about Take Charge Milady?
04:41Yeah, she looks a little unreliable at first glance.
04:43But as you say, she's had some issues that have been excuses for her poor efforts.
04:47I think the one negative with her, Gino, is that with less speed in this race, she is a horse that probably is going to need a little bit of help to close from towards the back of the pack.
