Stanton, DE (Sports Network) – Champion mare Royal Delta will take on five rivals Saturday as she defends her crown in the 76th running of the $750,000 Delaware Handicap (Del ‘Cap) at Delaware Park.<\/p>\n
Trained by Bill Mott, Royal Delta will attempt to become the first back-to- back winner of the 1 1\/4-mile stakes since Nastique in 1988-89. The other consecutive winning horses were Endine (1958-59), Obeah (1969-70) and Blessing Angelica (1971-72). Susan’s Girl won in 1973 and 1975.<\/p>\n
With Hall of Fame jockey Mike Smith again riding, Royal Delta will leave from post 3 and is the even-money morning-line favorite. In her 18-race career the mare has 10 wins for $3.8 million.<\/p>\n
“She is doing very well,” said Mott. “We could not ask for her to be doing any better. I would love to see her run in the Delaware Handicap the way she ran in the Fleur de Lis last year. When she runs a good one, she is awesome. She never really runs poorly and I think it gets to the point where we expect her to win, so when she does not, but still runs well, we get a little dumbfounded.<\/p>\n
“We are planning on shipping down to Delaware the morning of the race. It worked last year, so I think that would be the best approach this year.”<\/p>\n
The champion female is coming off a second-place finish as the 3-10 favorite in the Fleur de Lis, a race she won last year, behind Funny Proposition at Churchill Downs. It was her first start since finishing 10th in the Dubai World Cup.<\/p>\n
In her first race of the year, Royal Delta posted a five-length victory in the Sabin at Gulfstream Park.<\/p>\n
She claimed the Eclipse Award as champion older female of 2012 after winning her second straight Breeders’ Cup Ladies’ Classic.<\/p>\n
Here is the full field for the Del ‘Cap in post position order: She’s All In, Victor Carrasco, 15-1; Summer Applause, Alex Cintron, 7-2; Royal Delta, Mike Smith, even; Authenticity, TBA, 3-1; And Why Not, Joshua Navarro, 15-1 and Centring, Irad Ortiz Jr., 6-1.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stanton, DE (Sports Network) – Champion mare Royal Delta will take on five rivals Saturday as she defends her crown in the 76th running of the $750,000 Delaware Handicap (Del ‘Cap) at Delaware Park. Trained by Bill Mott, Royal Delta will attempt to become the first back-to- back winner of the 1 1\/4-mile stakes since […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[330],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-horses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stub.com\/hq\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}