Sparkle Blue needed to get her groove back. Laurel Park provided the place to do it.

Multiple graded stakes winner Sparkle Blue stepped out of graded stakes company for a return visit to the $100,000 Big Dreyfus Stakes Sunday at Laurel Park, a race she won in 2023. 

It wasn’t as easy as her 3-10 odds might have predicted, but you can make that two straight Big Dreyfus wins for the Hard Spun mare. Never far off the pace, she came wide in the lane under jockey Jorge Ruiz to wear down longtime leader Cut From Class to post a half-length victory – after surviving an objection by jockey Forest Boyce, who rode Charmed Way to a fifth-place finish.

“It looked like she had a pretty clear trip until the last sixteenth,” winning trainer Graham Motion said of his charge.

That final furlong is where Sparkle Blue lugged in while Cut From Class drifted out, the two coming together. That sealed off the hole at which Boyce had aimed her mount, and it caused both that runner and Tic Tic Tic Boom to steady. The latter finished sixth of the seven.

Nevertheless: no change, ruled the stewards.

Sparkle Blue had made all four of her prior starts this year in graded company, bagging a win in the Grade 2 Hillsborough at Tampa Bay Downs and obtaining two other placings. Last time out, though, she finished ninth in the Grade 1 New York. 

“We kind of threw her to the wolves a little bit last time in Saratoga, in what was almost like a Breeders’ Cup prep,” said Motion, who trains the horse for Catherine Parke and George Strawbridge’s Augustin Stable. “And the ground was very soft that day, and she struggled a little bit.”

Hence, the need for groove recovery.

“Catherine and I got together, and Mr. Strawbridge, and we decided to come back to where she won last year,” Motion said. “It seemed like a nice place to get her confidence back.”

Cut From Class finished second, snapping her three-race win streak. But she was a stubborn foe, indeed, against a proven graded stakes runner. It was almost certainly Cut From Class’s top career performance; the Steve Keil trainee has won four of 15 starts in her career and had Jeiron Barbosa up.

Another Motion trainee, Sun Bee, finished third, just a neck farther back, under jockey Kevin Gomez. Running time for the nine furlongs on a turf course rated firm was 1:47.82. Sparkle Blue paid $2.60 to win and topped an exacta that returned $7.80 for a buck.

The win pushed Sparkle Blue’s bankroll past the $950,000 mark, and she could become a millionaire as soon as her next start. That could come, Motion said, at Kentucky Downs, where last year she finished second in the Grade 3 Ladies Turf.

One race prior, Miss Harriett did what she often does: go to the front and not stop. This time it came in the seven-furlong Miss Disco Stakes for Maryland-bred or -sired sophomore fillies, and she led at every call en route to scoring by 2 ¼ lengths.

Trained by Brandon McFarlane for Narrow Leaf Farm, Miss Harriett got the distance in 1:25.14 on a fast main track. She’s now won four of nine career starts, three in stakes company.

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