Upsets seemed to be the order of the day March 22 at Fair Grounds Race Course & Slots—until Good Cheer stepped onto the track for the $396,000 Fair Grounds Oaks (G2).
Defending Breeders’ Cup Classic (G1) winner and champion 3-year-old male Sierra Leone had gone down to defeat two races earlier. The previous race went to an 86-1 long shot. But Good Cheer was having none of that in defense of her undefeated record and status as a Kentucky Oaks (G1) favorite.
After breaking cleanly, jockey Luis Saez kept the Medaglia d’Oro filly well off the moderate pace set by second-time starter Ahavah and waited for the second turn to make his move. Straightening out into the quarter-mile stretch, Good Cheer moved to the front and slowly edged away from Ahavah to win by 3 1/2 lengths over that rival.
Gowells Delight was a distant third as Good Cheer finished the 1 1/16 miles on a fast track in 1:43.44, earning 100 points to vault into the top slot on the Road to the Kentucky Oaks leaderboard with 145 total points. Ahavah, Gowells Delight, Quickick, and Her Laugh, the respective second- through fifth-place finishers in the Fair Grounds Oaks, earned points on a 50-25-15-10 scale.
“The plan today, we tried to break a little bit running from there and she was traveling pretty nice,” Saez said. “I felt like she was a little bit keen, actually, at a half-mile and when we came at the top of the stretch, she gave me a good turn of foot.”
“Six weeks before the (Kentucky) Oaks,” trainer Brad Cox said. “She’s 6-for-6 and the pressure’s on. It was on. And it stays on.
“She’s a very good filly that’s showed up every time we’ve led her over here. We’re very proud of her and hope that in six weeks we’ll have her as good as she is now. She’ll be tough.”
Cox said he and his staff have been fine-tuning the filly, who obviously hasn’t needed any major adjustments.
“We had worked on her a little bit to get her to go on and finish up and she responded well. I think she won by 3, 3 1/2 (lengths). We’ve always thought, the longer the better and she’ll get another sixteenth of a mile at Churchill.”
He said he’s confident the six-week break before the Kentucky Oaks won’t be an issue.
“Look, she’s not a massive filly. She’s got somewhat of a light frame, a lot of leg. So I don’t think it’s going to be any issue keeping her fit. It was the plan the whole time to have two races prior to the Oaks and she’s fit and ready to roll,” Cox said.
Good Cheer, a Godolphin homebred, was produced by the Street Sense mare Wedding Toast , herself a multiple grade 1 winner for Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum’s blue-clad battalions.
Good Cheer opened her account with an 8 1/4-length romp in a one-mile test at Horseshoe Indianapolis Aug. 5 and improved on that in the Churchill Downs slop Sept. 28, winning a 1 1/16-mile first-level allowance event by 17 lengths.
She followed that with a victory a month later in the Rags to Riches Stakes under the twin spires, by 4 3/4 lengths, and went on to win the Golden Rod Stakes (G2) by 2 1/2 lengths over subsequent Honeybee Stakes (G3) winner Quietside , who topped the Road to the Kentucky Oaks leaderboard entering weekend.
That was followed by a 6 1/4-length romp in last month’s Rachel Alexandra Stakes (G2), the final local prep for the Fair Grounds Oaks.
It was Cox’s fourth win in Fair Grounds’ signature Oaks prep for fillies. The Cox-trained Tarifa , also bred and owned by Godolphin, captured last year’s running. He also landed back-to-back editions of the race with Bonny South and Travel Column in 2020-21.
Medaglia d’Oro stands at Darley near Lexington for a fee of $75,000. He is the sire of 97 graded/group stakes winners worldwide and seven champions, including dual champion Songbird . Also among his grade 1 winners are two Kentucky Oaks winners, 2009 Horse of the Year and champion 3-year-old filly Rachel Alexandra , and 2011 winner Plum Pretty .
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