Paulaussilverlining / NYRA Photo

Paulassilverlining seeks G2 Honorable Miss glory

by Karen M. Johnson

As racing at Saratoga Race Course begins its first full week of action, the Grade 2, $200,000 Honorable Miss Handicap is the featured event on the Wednesday card.

A field of seven fillies and mares was entered in the six-furlong dirt race headed by 122-pound high weight Paulassilverlining, who is looking to extend her streak of consecutive graded stakes wins to three in the Honorable Miss. 

A 4-year-old daughter of Ghostzapper, Paulassilverlining races in the silks of her breeder, Vincent Scuderi. She is trained by Michelle Nevin. 

A winner of 6 of 13 career starts, with earnings exceeding $600,000, Paulassilverlining enters the Honorable Miss seeking her fourth win of 2016. The bay filly won her 2016 debut in head-turning fashion with a 9 1/4-length score in an optional claimer at Aqueduct in February. After a second in the Correction Stakes, Paulassilverlining easily won the Grade 3 Distaff Handicap at Aqueduct ahead of Grade 1 winner Cavorting.

Paulassilverlining followed with another graded stakes score a month later, in Belmont Park's Grade 3 Vagrancy Handicap.

"She's really putting it together this year," Nevin said of the filly who broke her maiden at Saratoga in 2014. "She's matured. What I think helps Paula is that she is just so relaxed and chilled-out, and doesn't put too much pressure on herself in the mornings. She's saving herself for the afternoon."

Jose Ortiz, who has been aboard Paulassilverlining for each of her starts this year, has the mount from the rail.

With her tactical speed, Nevin's filly figures to assume a stalking position behind the early leaders.

New York-bred Haveyougoneaway's trainer, Tom Morley, entered the Sequel Racing-owned mare - a closer who would benefit from lively early fractions - with the notion of scoping out the competition and assessing the projected pace set-up before committing to run. It would appear he will get his wish as there are a trio of fillies in the race who possess speed: Disco Chick, Diva Express and Sarah Sis.

John Oxley's Diva Express became a stakes winner this spring when she finished in a dead-heat in the Grade 3 Winning Colors at Churchill Downs. 

Diva Express will be ridden by Julien Leparoux from post 5. 

Bar of Gold, a New York-bred from the stable of John Kimmel, finished second in last year's Grade 1 Test and Grade 2 Prioress at Saratoga. In her second start of 2016, she was third in the Distaff Handicap, behind Paulassilverlining and Cavorting. Since then the daughter of Medaglia d'Oro won the Critical Eye Stakes against state-breds. In her most recent race, she was third in the Grade 3 Bed o' Roses Handicap at Belmont Park in June.

"I think she is doing very well right now and is sitting on a very good performance," Kimmel said of the 4-year-old he trains for Chester and Mary Broman. "Obviously, Paulassilverlining is the horse to beat. We got hung pretty far wide when we ran against Paula in the Distaff. Paula got through on the inside and she had the perfect trip and set-up. Actually, I was the furthest outside, because Cavorting was also inside of me. I thought our filly ran pretty darn good that day."

Also entered in the 25th running of the Honorable Miss is La Madrina, who has not run since May 13 when she won an allowance race in the mud at Pimlico for Hall of Fame trainer Shug McGaughey. 

Completing the field are multiple graded stakes winner Sarah Sis, who captured the Grade 3 Chicagoland Handicap on Arlington Park's synthetic racing surface in her last start; and Disco Chick, a Parx shipper and multiple stakes winner on the Mid-Atlantic circuit who is making her graded stakes debut.