Grade 1 Miesque Stakes
The Miesque Stakes, a Grade 3 event for 2yo fillies, is one of four graded stakes races on the Paris racecard, and this 7-furlong event features a compact field of talented young femmes looking to edge toward superstar status. A couple of undefeated stakes-debut types join a pair of established stakes runners and a pair of graded-stakes winners in the compact field of six.
They’ll be going after a $150,000 purse and the famed “France Didn’t Surrender – Today” Trophy.
GIANT IN THE SKY is a Giant’s Causeway filly, the first out of a 10yo Forty Niner sim mare that had a long 71-race career. The dokki trainee won at first asking, but couldn’t keep up in a pair of graded tries right after that. She seems to be getting better now with a pair of solid wins against lesser; is it improvement or weaker company? Only her farrier knows for sure… To this writer’s surprise, the CPU handicapper is impressed, making her the 9/5 favorite.
ONE MORE GHOST is just a couple of strides away from being undefeated on the grass after a fast-closing near-miss in a small stakes at this distance last time out. A daughter of lightly-used Aussie sire Onemorenomore out of a Sim stakes-winner by Ghostzapper, this deadwood66 trainee hasn’t tried the graded-stakes wars yet, and gets 4/1 odds for her first try.
MEZZI is 2-for-2 thus far for italst and has shown a strong closing kick, but tries stakes company for the first time. A King Kamehameha filly out of a stakes winning Sim mare by Green Desert, she shows a ton of promise but tries much tougher here. Her speed figure last time was solid, and she could pull off a mild 4/1 upset on her best effort.
SCOOCH ON OVER is undefeated, if you don’t count her April debut on a wet course. A daughter of King Kamehameha out of a stakes-winning Sadler’s Wells mare who has produced fairly well in the sim, she has all the earmarks of a future star, especially if she is able to prove she can handle longer races. She begins her quest to do just that here, having not raced beyond 6 furlongs in the past. The cylla1111 trainee’s bankroll is quite a bit larger than those of the rest of today’s field’s totals, combined. Lots of positives in this one’s favor, and friendly 2/1 odds to boot.
COSSACK SINGA pulled off a 25/1 upset in her debut at a slightly longer distance and the scratch-bred Danasinga filly looks for a much bigger prize here. The thehofman1 trainee gets 25/1 odds again… While large race-to-race improvements sometimes happens with 2yo’s, this looks like a pretty steep hill to climb.
WENT WOOSHKA is a scratch-bred Dansili x Storm Cat x Kingmambo filly trained by tazbred3. She started off her career with a bang (3 straight wins), but bombed badly in the Grade 1 Meydan Stakes and was then brought down to a smaller stakes where she ran a pretty-good 3rd. Looking at her single 7-furlong try it appears she can handle the distance well, but against this company it’s a tall order. She goes off at 6/1.
One of the things a handicapper likes to know when evaluating a race is, “Who is going to set the pace?”. It seems to me that the closest to an early-lead type of runner here is SCOOCH ON OVER. With her proven ability in graded races and the strong possibility of an easy lead, this one will be very tough to beat.
I’ll take MEZZI as my choice to get closest with her late run.
GIANT IN THE SKY, the other graded-stakes winner in the field, should be able to grab the show dough.
Good luck all!