Trainer Flint Stites, based at Penn National, will send a pair of contenders to Laurel Park on Saturday for stakes action.

Circle P, owned by DeSales 85 LLC, headlines Stites’s duo in the $200,000 General George Stakes (G3) at seven furlongs. The 4-year-old Maryland-bred gelding is listed at 12-1 on the morning line and appears to be rounding back into top form.

A stakes winner at two when he claimed the Maryland Juvenile Stakes, he has since hit the board in multiple stakes, including a runner-up effort in the Howard and Sondra Bender Memorial on Dec. 21 and a third-place finish in the Jennings Stakes on Jan. 18.

A Maryland-bred gelding by Speightster out of Quiet Inferno (by Quiet American), he is a half-brother to stakes winner Sir Rick. Ricardo Chiappe will guide the late-running gelding from post six, hoping for a fast pace to set up his closing kick.

Stablemate Wild Vine takes on the $100,000 John B. Campbell Stakes at 1 1/8 miles. The 6-year-old Pennsylvania-bred Red Vine gelding is 8-1 on the morning line and enters off a 16-1 upset victory in a high-level allowance at Laurel on Jan. 26.

With six wins from 17 starts and earnings surpassing $187,000, Wild Vine has proven his ability to step up in class for Stites and owners Short Straw Stable. He finished sixth in the 2024 Robert T. Manfuso Stakes in December, but his latest effort suggests he’s coming into peak form.

Jomar Torres has the mount.

Perhaps most intriguing is Wild Vine’s origin story.

“I got this horse for nothing,” Stites revealed after his recent win. “A friend of mine set me up with him when he was a yearling. He was turned out in a field in Kentucky, still on his mother with another mare. He had never been touched by human hands.”

Both runners will look to continue their upward trajectory when they line up at Laurel on Saturday.