86th Delaware Handicap attracts strong 6-horse field at Delaware Park

The Delaware Handicap is known for bringing some of the nation’s top horses, trainers and jockeys to the First State, and this year will be no exception.

Brad Cox, who ranks first nationally among trainers in earnings this year, and Todd Pletcher – who has won the DelCap a record-tying four times – will have two of the six horses in the starting gate for Saturday’s Grade II, $500,000 race, the highlight of the season at the Stanton oval.

Cox trains 7-5 morning-line favorite Idiomatic, who is coming off a 2½-length win in the Grade III Shawnee at Churchill Downs on June 3. The 4-year-old filly will be ridden by Florent Geroux, who ranks 12th nationally in earnings by a jockey this year and won the 2016 DelCap aboard I’m a Chatterbox.

Pletcher will go for his fifth DelCap win with Classy Edition, who has won six of her nine career starts. The 4-year-old won the Grade III Royal Delta – named after the two-time DelCap winner – at Gulfstream Park in February.

Kendrick Carmouche will ride Classy Edition, who dusted a field of New York-breds by 2¼ lengths in the $200,000 Critical Eye in her most recent start, May 29 at Belmont.

The third graded-stakes winner in the field is Battle Bling, the only 5-year-old, who won the Grade III Turnback the Alarm Handicap at Aqueduct last November.

Rob Atras trains Battle Bling, who finished second – a record 12 lengths behind Miss Leslie – on a sloppy track in last year’s DelCap. She will be ridden Saturday by Angel Cruz, who piloted Miss Leslie to victory last year.

But the local favorite – the second choice at 5-2 on the morning line – will be Morning Matcha. The 4-year-old could help Robert “Butch” Reid Jr. become just the third trainer to sweep the Delaware Oaks and Delaware Handicap in the same year.

Reid scored an upset in the Oaks with 14-1 long shot Foggy Night last Saturday. It was his second win in the Oaks, but Morning Matcha will be the first Delaware Handicap starter for the 66-year-old, who grew up in nearby Woodbury, New Jersey.

“Delaware Park is a racetrack I grew up within a half-hour of, so we were always watching those big races,” Reid told DelPark racing information coordinator Chris Sobocinski.  “As a kid, we were always coming to Delaware Park and those were races we always looked forward to coming to watch, so this is really exciting.”

Experience helps at Delaware Park

Morning Matcha finished third in the Delaware Oaks as a 3-year-old last summer, and is the only horse in the field with a start over the track this year. She finished second by a nose in the $160,000 Obeah Stakes on May 27, a prep that Reid believes should benefit her Saturday.

“It looks like there is a fair amount of speed in the race, so it should set up really nice for her,” Reid said. “… As a trainer who has been running horses at Delaware Park for a long time, I really appreciate giving a horse a race over the track. Hopefully that will work to our advantage.”

Reid could join Pletcher and Jerry Hollendorfer as the only trainers to win the Oaks and DelCap in the same year. Pletcher did it in 2006 with Adieu (Oaks) and Fleet Indian (DelCap), while Hollendorfer swept in 2017 with It Tiz Well (Oaks) and Songbird (DelCap).

Paco Lopez rode Foggy Night last week, and could become just the fourth jockey to sweep both of Delaware Park’s biggest races with a win aboard Morning Matcha. The last jockey to pull off the double was John Velasquez in 1977.

Another intriguing entry is Royal Take Charge, the least experienced horse in the field with just four career starts. But the 4-year-old, trained by Albert Stall Jr., has won three of them and comes here off of three sharp workouts at Churchill Downs in the last three weeks.

The longest shot in the field – 12-1 in the morning line – is Gamestonks. The 4-year-old filly has won five races, but finished last – 39 lengths behind - at 42-1 odds in the Grade I Ogden Phipps at Belmont in her graded-stakes debut on June 10.

A little shorter this year

The 86 running of the DelCap has been shortened by a 16 of a mile to 1 3/16 miles this year. It had been 1¼ miles every year since 1951, with the exception of a 1 1/8-mile edition in 2020 due to the pandemic.

First post time will be 12:30 p.m., with the Delaware Handicap scheduled to go off at 4:46 as the ninth race on the 10-race card.

The fifth race – the $100,000 Dashing Beauty – is a six-furlong sprint that drew a stout field of 10 fillies.

But the best race of the day may be the seventh, the $150,000 Battery Park Stakes. The entries for the 1 1/16-mile test show three horses with more than $1 million in career earnings – Fearless, Warrant and Forewarned.

Reid will send out a horse with a name sure to draw a reaction from First State fans in the Battery Park – Ridin With Biden. The 5-year-old has won eight of 22 career starts – including three of his last four – and scored a graded-stakes win in the Grade III Greenwood Cup at Parx last September.