By Dick Jerardi
After three weeks without racing at Parx during the annual summer break, racing returned with 12 races and 131 horses Saturday (an incredible 11 horses per race on Owners’ and Trainers’ Appreciation Day) and then followed up with Smarty Jones Day Tuesday with five stakes that serve as preps for Pennsylvania Derby Day Sept. 19.
The fields were so full and competitive Saturday when the purses were boosted (eight $50,000 races, two for $60,000, two for $100,000) that players bet more than $3.7 million on the card even though it was going up against Saratoga. With so much purse money on the line, owners and trainers were taking a few risks with their claiming horses and an incredible 29 horses were claimed on the day.
Tuesday was less about the claimers and more about stakes horses. The fields were not nearly as large, but the competition was still there, especially in the two feature races, the $200,000 Smarty Jones Stakes and the $200,000 Cathryn Sophia, preps for the $1 million Pennsylvania Derby and $1 million Cotillion on Sept. 19.
Ponder and Dream, coming off a dominating win in the Lil E Tee Stakes, was the deserving 1-2 favorite in the Smarty Jones. By the numbers, the colt was by far the fastest in the race and had the additional edge of being lone speed in the 1 1/16-mile race.
It played out exactly how it looked on paper until the final 200 yards when 5-1 Micanopy, named for a small Florida town just south of Gainesville, completely flipped the script and ran by Ponder and Dream to win by 1 1/2 lengths and give trainer Michael Simone the first stakes win of his career.
“We do pretty good in the claiming ranks,” Simone said. “But it hits different when you win a nice race like this.”
Micanopy was claimed for $8,000 by the trainer for owner Jane Perry on April 25, 2026 at Tampa Bay Downs. The horse won that day and, after what Simone remembers as a “five- or six-way shake,” they got the horse.
“We were lucky to get him,” Simone said. “He seems to be improving each race…He seemed to really like this racetrack well, I could tell you that.”
After the claim, Micanopy won again at Delaware Park before finishing second and fourth in two DelPark races. It was clearly a good claim and the horse was improving, but Micanopy was going to need the race of his life to catch Ponder and Dream.
And that is exactly what he delivered for the owner, trainer and jockey Samuel Marin, who gave the horse a perfect trip along the rail until he swung out on the far turn and took off after the favorite who had been the solo leader from the start.
Ponder and Dream ran exactly how he figured to run and about as fast as expected. The third horse was 8 1/2 lengths back. Ponder and Dream ran a winning race. He just came up against a horse that just ran better on the day. Expect both horses back in the Pennsylvania Derby.
Smarty’s owner Pat Chapman and trainer John Servis were in the winner’s circle to present the trophy for the Smarty Jones Stakes.
“I’m going to go see Smarty Jones (tomorrow),” Pat Chapman said. “I’m going to go see the guy who’s made all this possible for us.”
That would be 2 hours west of Parx at Equistar Farm in Annville, Pa. where Smarty, now 25, will live out his life.
“it was the ride of a lifetime,” Servis said of 2004. “We get to enjoy it one day out of the year doing this.”
The Cathryn Sophia was a virtual match race between 3-10 Tap to Open and 9-1 Ms Sophistication. It was Flavien Prat, winner of the last two Eclipse Awards as the nation’s leading jockey, on the favorite and Paco Lopez, leading the nation in wins (222) this year and incredibly the leading rider this summer at three concurrent meets – Monmouth Park, Delaware Park and Colonial Downs – on the the 9-1 shot.
Tap to Open was in front with Ms Sophistication always just behind in the 1 mile-70 yard race. When they hit the eighth pole, Ms. Sophistication caught up and actually passed the favorite. But Tap to Open re-broke in the final 100 yards and eased ahead just before the wire to win it by a head.
Trained by Brad Cox, Tap to Open, a full sister to multiple stakes winner Charge It, was bred and is owned by Mandy Pope’s Whisper Hill Farm. Pope made a big splash in 2012 when she bought 2010 Cotillion winner Havre De Grace for $10 million and 2011 Cotillion winner Plum Pretty for $4.2 million at Kentucky horse sales. Now, she may have a chance to win the Cotillion herself with Tap to Open.
“We hope so if everything works out,” Pope said of a potential return for the Cotillion. “We’ve always had a lot of confidence in her.”
And to come back and win a Grade I?
“It would be astronomical,” Pope said. “It would put our farm up there with everybody else’s at the top.”
Mailata, a two-time Parx stakes winner last year, recaptured that form in the $75,000 President’s Sprint when he came again in the stretch at 18-1 for jockey Abner Adorno and owners LC Racing and Wellesley Stable to win by 2 1/4 lengths over 6 1/2 furlongs.
“We ran into some difficulties in the winter,” winning trainer Butch Reid said. “He always looked like an immature horse. We gave him some time and it’s really paid off. I’m glad to see him come back with a nice race today.”
Fire Pit. off at 4-1, won the 7-furlong $75,000 State Representative’s Sprint for owner Travin Stables and trainer Lupe Preciado, but it was absolutely Prat, down from Saratoga for the day, who made the difference.
The winner looked hopelessly trapped behind horses on the turn and well into the stretch. Prat never panicked and when a hole finally opened, he sent Fire Pit into the opening and the horse ran down 9-1 Houghton Shuffle to win by three-quarters of a length.
“I thought I was behind the right horse (Maximus Meridius), but he just never kicked away turning for home, so then I had to go around him,” Prat said. “He gave me a great run when I got out.”
Prat had been to Parx several times through the years before Tuesday, most memorably when he won the 2022 Pa. Derby on Hot Rod Charlie.
“It’s always fun to come back here,” he said. “It’s a great track. We had a good run with Hot Rod Charlie.”
Margie’s Fun Son was the longest shot (16-1) in the $75,000 Mayor’s Mile. No matter. When jockey Frankie Martinez guided the Marian Cizmar-owned, Ronald Abrams-trained 6-year-old to the outside in the stretch, the horse just took off, blew by the field and won by 3 1/4 lengths.
Bensalem Mayor for Life Joe Digirolamo was in the winner’s circle to present the trophy.
“It’s thrilling to see the horses,” the mayor said. “I love the thoroughbred. I even watch them on TV every Saturday. Horse racing, it’s nothing like it. To have the Mayor’s Mile, it feels great so I enjoy it.”
And to have it on Smarty Jones Day?
“Smarty put everybody on the map,” the mayor said.
And would we even be here without Smarty Jones, the catalyst for casinos in the Commonwealth?
“I would have to wonder (about) that,” Mayor Joe said.
