Connections Being Rewarded for Faith in Champion Filly Luna Belle
Primacy Looks to Extend Streak to Three with First Stakes Triumph

BALTIMORE – At some point The Elkstone Group’s stakes-winning homebred Joe, Maryland’s champion 2-year-old male of 2021, will get another shot on the grass, where his career began last fall. But not now.

Joe’s immediate future remains on dirt, where he looms a major player in Saturday’s $125,000 Federico Tesio at Laurel Park. For the seventh straight year, the 1 1/8-mile Tesio serves as a ‘Win and In’ qualifier for Triple Crown-nominated 3-year-olds to the $1.5 million Preakness Stakes (G1).

Trained by Michael Trombetta, Joe is listed as the narrow 5-2 program favorite in a field of nine for the Tesio over ex-claimer Shake Em Loose (3-1), a winner of back-to-back stakes including the March 19 Private Terms, where he snapped Joe’s three-race win streak.

“Mike has been pushing grass since our very first start, which is the one time he was off the board. Mike is convinced that he will be a better grass horse than a dirt horse, and he’s been a pretty nice dirt horse,” Elkstone’s Stuart Grant said. “If he steps up as a grass horse, he could be a ton of fun. But we’re going to run in the Tesio and see how he does, and then we’ll look for options. Those options will certainly include giving him another shot on the grass.”

Joe drew Post 4 and will have regular rider Victor Carrasco up for the sixth straight race. All horses except Shake Em Loose (124) and Parx shipper Vine Jet (120) will carry 118 pounds.

“I like how we fit in the race. I like our post. I like that we’re getting six pounds from the horse that beat us last time out, and Mike tells me that the horse is training real well,” Grant said. “I think we’ll be tough.”

Shake Em Loose got the jump on Joe in the Private Terms and Carrasco was unable to reel in the leader, finishing 1 ¾ lengths behind but six clear of multiple stakes winner Local Motive in third.

“The nice thing is we actually stepped up when we went back and looked at the numbers,” Grant said. “He did make a step up. Unfortunately it wasn’t as big a step as I wanted to get to our ultimate goal of the Preakness, but I think we fit really well in the Tesio. I guess we’ll see.”

Grant opted not to nominate Joe to the Triple Crown at the late March 28 deadline, which would have cost $6,000. Horses not nominated to the Triple Crown races can be supplemented at the time of entry, which for the Preakness is $150,000. The 147th Preakness will be run May 21 at historic Pimlico Race Course.

A Tesio win would earn Shake Em Loose, Smarten Up and Secret Alliance, a last out Parx maiden winner, the automatic Preakness berth.

“It’s still relatively early in the 3-year-old year. He still keeps developing,” Grant said of Joe, named for President Joe Biden. “Obviously I’d love to win the race. It’s an important race and we’d love to win it. What I really want to see is another step forward and, if he can do that, he will be a really useful horse. Maybe he won’t be [in] Grade 1 company right now but if he can step up and win this race, you’d certainly look at him as a horse that we’d think about some graded-stakes races and a really fun summer. We’re excited about the race.”

Grant reported that Grade 3 winner Wondrwherecraigis, which Elkstone owns in partnership with Madaket Stable and Michael Dubb, emerged well from his 10th-place finish in the $2 million Golden Shaheen (G1) March 26 in Dubai, and has returned to the U.S. and trainer Brittany Russell.

Prior to the Golden Shaheen, the 5-year-old gelding had finished first in five consecutive races, all stakes, but was disqualified to second in the Frank J. De Francis Memorial Dash (G3) last fall for interference. He won the Bold Ruler (G3) at Belmont Park in his subsequent start, the first graded win for horse and trainer, and Laurel’s Jan. 29 Fire Plug.

“Anytime you get a chance to run for $2 million, you’ve sort of got to give it a shot. We were excited for two-thirds of the race and then, unfortunately, he faded after that,” Grant said. “He came out of it good. He’s jogging now. I don’t think he’ll get back into serious training until mid-May which means we may see him back sometime in June.”

Connections Being Rewarded for Faith in Champion Filly Luna Belle

Before becoming a fan favorite and the leading 3-year-old filly in the Mid-Atlantic, Luna Belle had one maiden win and a few troubled trips, two of them in stakes, until making a statement with her victory in last December’s Maryland Juvenile Fillies. That’s when phone calls began.

Co-owned by Deborah Greene and Laurel Park-based trainer Hamilton Smith, both also listed as breeder of the Great Notion filly with Greene’s late father, Fred Greene Jr., Luna Belle was third or better in five of seven starts at 2, and was named Maryland’s champion juvenile filly of 2021.

The phone rang again after Luna Belle opened her sophomore season with a six-length triumph in the six-furlong Xtra Heat Jan. 29. Then came a three-length score in the seven-furlong Wide Country Feb. 19, and the connections found themselves dealing with more interested buyers.

Neither her connections nor Luna Belle’s suitors could ever agree on a number, not that Greene is even listening anymore. A 3 ½-length winner of the one-mile Beyond the Wire March 19, Luna Belle chases a fifth consecutive stakes win in Saturday’s $125,000 Weber City Miss.

“After the Juvenile, the phone rang and [Smith] got an offer. We talked about it, and he came back with a higher price,” Greene said. “Then after the next win, he said a higher price and I said, ‘That’s it. She’s just not for sale.’ We’ve talked about it. If you sell her and you get the money, then you go to the horse sale and try to find a horse exactly like her. We’ve already got her, so we’re going to keep her. I think we both agree on that.”

At about 1 1/16 miles, the Weber City Miss will be the longest race to date for Luna Belle and her first around two turns. It also offers the winner an automatic berth to the $250,000 Black-Eyed Susan (G2) Friday, May 20 at historic Pimlico Race Course.

“She doesn’t seem to get tired. It doesn’t seem to bother her,” Greene said of the steadily increasing distances of Luna Belle’s races. “She’s unbelievable. I can’t believe it.”

Luna Belle showed a different dimension in the Beyond the Wire, where she chased early pacesetter Diamond Collector for a quarter-mile before taking the top spot over the top spot and leaving her rivals behind. Luna Belle had come from off the pace in her previous races, rallying from late to first in the Wide Country.

“In the [Weber City], Ham said, ‘She’s too far back,’ and I thought so, too. Then, of course, she came on in that unbelievable stretch run,” Greene said. “Then [last time] she moved too quickly and we’d never seen her run like that, so we didn’t know what to think. I didn’t know if she was going to get tired because of the distance or anything, and she’s just amazing. It’s like anything you put in front of her she just does it. I still think I’m a little numb.”

Should all go well in the Weber City, Smith said the plan would be to go on to the 1 1/8-mile Black-Eyed Susan, one of the country’s oldest and most prestigious races for 3-year-old fillies, and then get a break to point for a late summer and fall campaign. Luna Belle has run at least once a month since her debut last July.

“That is going to be up to Hamilton Smith,” Greene said. “Whatever Ham wants to do is what we’re going to do.”

Primacy Looks to Extend Streak to Three with First Stakes Triumph

Pick Five Racing’s Primacy, third or better in nine of 11 career starts, ships in from out of town seeking her fourth win, third in a row and first in a stakes in Saturday’s $100,000 Heavenly Cause at Laurel Park.

Based in New York with four-time Eclipse Award-winning trainer Chad Brown, Primacy is a daughter of Belmont Stakes (G1) winner Union Rags who began her 5-year-old season winning an open allowance sprinting seven furlongs Jan. 20 at Aqueduct. In her most recent start, she defeated Frost Point by a length in a one-mile optional claimer, also at Aqueduct. Both races came over wet tracks.

“I think she comes here in good form,” jockey Feargal Lynch said. “She won well last time out. I’m hoping for a good run. It’s quite an open race. There’s a few nice horses in there.”

Primacy is listed at 8-1 on the morning line in the Heavenly Cause, for fillies and mares 3 and up going one mile. She will break from Post 6 in a field of 12 led by multiple stakes winner Miss Leslie, a lukewarm 4-1 program favorite over Fille d’Esprit, eight-length winner of the seven-furlong Conniver last out March 19 at Laurel.

“I think she fits very well,” Lynch said. “She won well last time out and she comes here ultra-competitive.”

Primacy fetched $240,000 as a 2-year-old in training in April 2019. She didn’t debut until February of her 3-year-old season, running second to Finding Fame in a maiden special weight at Gulfstream Park. Finding Fame is also entered in the Heavenly Cause, her second start for trainer Michael Trombetta.

Lynch won the Private Terms and Federico Tesio for Brown in 2017 aboard Twisted Tom. The 1 1/8-mile Tesio headlines a Spring Stakes Spectacular program featuring four stakes worth $450,000 in purses, and serves as a ‘Win and In’ qualifier for Triple Crown-nominated 3-year-olds to the 147th Preakness Stakes (G1) May 21 at historic Pimlico Race Course.

“He just lets me ride my own race, see how the pace develops around me and take it from there,” Lynch said.