No Obvious Favorite in Maryland Ladies

Saturday is Maryland Million Day at Laurel Park, with 11 races restricted to Maryland-breds, including nine stakes races.  While several of those stakes will be featuring a clear-cut favorite, one that is expected to be more wide open is the $125,000 Maryland Million Ladies Stakes, for three-year-olds and upwards, running 1 1/8 miles on the turf. The lukewarm 3-1 morning line favorite is Mystic Love, who won three of four starts in 2012, including minor stakes scores at Laurel as well as Gulfstream, but who has yet to recapture that form and hasn’t hit the board in four tries in 2013.

Second choice has yet to score a win this season

Facing similar issues is the defending race champ, Pagan Priestess (4-1), who ran off the pace last year before driving through the stretch to win by a length. She followed that up with a low-level AOC win as the favorite, and although she has been placed in allowance events this year, she has yet to find the winner’s circle in five starts. At 6-1 is Monster Sleeping, who ran big at long odds to finish third last time out in the Jameela Stakes behind multiple stakes winner Madame Giry, and Ju Ju Eyeballs, heavy favorite in the Maryland Million Distaff.

Dance With Gio will likely be coming late

An intriguing pick for the exotics at 15-1 could be the four-year-old Dance With Gio. Third in this race last year, she’s coming off a win as the favorite in a mid-level claiming event at Belmont, where she came out of the clouds and was forced to go six-wide at the top of the stretch, and managed to make up more than five lengths on the leader to get up in the final strides to win by 3/4 of a length. She showed the same strong late kick to win at this distance at 21-1 last October in a $75,000 AOC race at Belmont.