Tenacious Stakes Picks

The Tenacious Stakes is part of a fantastic 12-race card on Saturday at Fair Grounds and features the return of #2 Just a Touch (7/5). The four-year-old son of Justify has had some tough luck in securing his first stakes victory but is supremely talented. After winning in debut in 2024, he finished second in the Gotham (G3) and Blue Glass (G1) behind a pair of horses, Deterministic and Sierra Leone, who ended up being multiple Grade 1 winners. Despite only having a maiden win, he qualified for the Kentucky Derby (G1) but finished last after a horrendous start being bumped hard between horses. He made one final start in 2024, a narrow defeat in the Iowa Derby, before going to the bench for eight months for trainer Brad Cox. He came back in 2025 with a pair of emphatic victories at Fair Grounds and Keeneland against allowance and optional claiming competition before running in the Met Mile (G1) where he finished third to Raging Torrent and Fierceness. In July, he ran in the Monmouth Cup (G3) and was the 1/9 favorite but got a questionable ride from jockey Florent Geroux. Rather than letting the horse use his natural speed to open up on an inferior group, Geroux choked the horse back to slow early fractions and was unexpectedly confronted by longshot Surface to Air. Just a Touch hung tough but was ultimately bested at the wire in a race he should never have lost. The horse went to the bench again and Geroux has been finding himself on fewer Brad Cox mounts in recent months. Indeed, jockey Luis Saez takes over the mount on Saturday while Geroux is conveniently in Japan riding in a world competition. I would suspect that Saez will have the horse better positioned early as the horse has shown he can get the distance while rating off the pace. While Just a Touch has never won off Lasix and his two best Beyer Speed Figures (BSFs) were with Lasix, he has run well without it and any of those efforts would be good enough to win this race. He is a short price and will likely get bet down even more, but he is so talented that I think Saturday is finally the day he gets his first stakes victory.

Another horse who has faced some hard luck, particularly at Fair Grounds, is #1 Komorebino Omoide (4/1) for trainer Robertino Diodoro. The son of fan favorite California Chrome was bred in Japan but has been a stalwart for Diodoro since his debut at Oaklawn two years ago. He has had success winning stakes races at minor tracks like Delta Downs, Lone Star, and Foner Park, but has always come up just short in bigger stakes races as he finished second to eventual Dubai World Cup (G1) winner Hit Show in last year’s Louisiana Stakes (G2) and was on the wrong side of a tough beat in last year’s Mineshaft (G3) against the horse Hall of Fame. However, he runs honest and rarely runs a bad race. Due to his post position, jockey Paco Lopez will be aggressive from the inside rail to get this horse up on the lead going into the first turn. Having a horse like Just a Touch stalk just off you might not be ideal, but I believe Lopez should be able to control things up front and get reasonable fractions. He has won at the distance before but might simply be an underneath play when facing this caliber of competition.

Part of the reason I put Komorebino Omoide second was because I am trying to get around using #7 Not This Boy (2/1) in my exactas. The son of Not This Time for trainer Dan Cowans gets Jose Ortiz in the irons, though the horse is cross entered in a race at Laurel Park on Saturday while he is training out of Turfway Park. The horse has legitimate early speed but might not be fast enough to get to the front against this group from the outside post. However, he has won coming from off the pace, so Ortiz can have the horse rate behind his two primary rivals. I do question the distance of 8.5 furlongs as he dropped off his back-to-back triple-digit BSFs his previous two races while finishing third by over three lengths against $100,000 allowance optional claiming company at Churchill Downs. He can run well off Lasix, but he reminds me a bit of Komorebino Omoide in that he can win some stakes races at smaller circuits but might fall just short against better graded stakes company. However, if I have the same opinion of him and Komorebino Omoide and the latter is twice the price on the morning line, I’ll always side with the bigger price who gets the better post position to save ground around both turns.

Finally, trainer Kenny McPeek has an intriguing horse with #6 Sir Greyland (6/1) as the son of Speightster has been the model of consistency being assigned a 90 BSF the last four times out. Typically, I do not like Speighter’s going two turns, but this one has proven he can do it as he is 3-5 winning at this distance while never missing the board. His speed figures might need to improve a few ticks, but he will be third back in the form cycle after a seven-month layoff. McPeek is notoriously horrendous when his horses switch off Lasix as he wins at an 8% clip (10-121) when running them in stakes competition over the last five years. However, those numbers look a lot better when you segment his older horses running on the dirt as they have been winning at a 19% rate (7-36) in the last five years. Sir Greyland fits into that category and ran a close second his only time previously running against stakes competition. The horse likes to come from off the pace, but there should be enough pace for a few runners to start backing up. McPeek is a trainer who can pop at unexpected times, and this runner feels very live.