Buy TicketsRace 11 at Santa Anita | Monday December 26 | Post Time 7 PM Eastern
American Oaks – Grade 1 | Purse $300,000 | One Mile and One-Quarter on Turf | Fillies, Three Years Old
Top contenders:
Skims (7) was bred in England but has run only in North America, nine times to be exact. The two most recent races are the most relevant as they were huge efforts when second (beaten a head) in the Dueling Grounds Oaks in September and when first in the Grade 2 Sands Point Stakes in mid-October. She’s the ONLY filly in the field to have won a Grade 2 race this year. The Dueling Grounds Oaks was run at one mile and five-sixteenths to that’s another plus as the mile and one-quarter trip will be no issue. Jockey John Velazquez was up for the first time in the Sands Point and comes to the west coast to ride the filly again. As a daughter of incomparable race horse and sire Frankel, Skims looks very tough in this situation.
That being said, Sparkle Blue (2) is another to strongly consider as a contender as she’s done little wrong in her last three races, all stakes. She finished second in the Virginia Oaks in September then won the Grade 3 Valley View Stakes at Keeneland at the end of October. Joel Rosario was aboard for the first time in that race and rides her back. Although she’s never raced farther than nine furlongs, I have little doubt Sparkle Blue can get this longer trip as she’s out of the mare Silk n’ Sapphire, who produced Shared Account, a multiple stakes winner on grass of over $1.6 million including the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf in 2010.
Pizza Bianca (8) may go favored in this deep field by virtue of being one of only two horses who raced at the grade 1 stakes level in their most recent starts, the other being Mise En Scene (6). Pizza Bianca was third in the Grade 1 Matriarch Stakes at the beginning of the month but that effort may be better than it looks on paper because although she was beaten five and one-quarter lengths, winner Regal Glory drew off by more than five lengths while Pizza Bianca rallied strongly from sixth to miss second by a nose in the photo. She won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf back in 2021 at Del Mar and is winless in her last three races, including when fourth behind Skims in the Sands Point, but she was returning from four months off that day and was the nine to five favorite and perhaps now that she has two races under her belt, the last one her first start in southern California, she may be approaching top form good enough to compete here once again.
There are no real knocks on another quarter of runners here – Rhea Moon (1), Bellstreet Bridie (5), Mise En Scene (6) and Salimah (9), with three of the four having won stakes races in their most recent starts. With it likely there will be some value among them, I will include them in second on some exacta tickets below.