Champion Filly Immersive Returns in Aqueduct Distaff, Faces Local Star With the Angels

Godolphin's Immersive, who swept through her juvenile season without a defeat to earn the 2024 Eclipse Award as Champion 2-Year-Old Filly, returns to competition Saturday in the Grade 3, $150,000 Distaff at Aqueduct Racetrack, a seven-furlong sprint that doubles as one of the sharpest matchups on a six-stakes card dominated by the 101st running of the Wood Memorial.

The Distaff will be Immersive's first start in more than six months, her first since trainer Brad Cox sent her out for a win in the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies at Del Mar last November. Cox, a dual Eclipse Award winner himself, now wheels her back as a 4-year-old off a layoff that kept her away from the Kentucky Oaks trail entirely. Regular rider Manny Franco gets the call again from post seven, and the central question around the comeback is whether the tactical speed and maturity Immersive showed going two turns as a juvenile translates cleanly to a one-turn sprint.

Standing directly in her path is With the Angels, the 4-year-old New York-bred daughter of Omaha Beach who has made the Aqueduct winter meet her personal showcase. Trained by Linda Rice and owned by Winning Move Stable, John Oxley, Lady Sheila Stable, Silverwood Stables, and Sanford Robbins, With the Angels has won seven of nine career starts with her only losses coming as runner-up efforts. She arrived at the Distaff off a career-best performance: a 4½-length demolition of the field in the Correction Stakes on March 1 that earned a 93 Beyer Speed Figure. Rice, speaking after the Correction, called the number almost alarming in its magnitude. "It was a fast number, almost too fast," she said. "We're taking it one day at a time into the Distaff. We'll be interested to see what the race looks like."

Rice's confidence in the distance is grounded in history. With the Angels won the 2024 Joseph A. Gimma by 9¾ lengths at seven furlongs, the exact Distaff trip, and Rice herself has won this race four times, with La Verdad (2014 and 2015), Holiday Disguise (2018), and Mommasgottarun (2023). The local form is unambiguous; the unanswered question is how a 93 Beyer winter-meet figure holds up against Godolphin's unbeaten champion returning from a layoff.

The race sits on the Wood Memorial Day card, which also includes the Grade 2 Gazelle for 3-year-old Kentucky Oaks contenders and the Grade 2 Carter at seven furlongs for older horses, making April 4 one of the most consequential days of Aqueduct's spring meet. For Immersive's connections, a sharp return in the Distaff could set up a summer campaign through the Coaching Club American Oaks, the Alabama, or a second run at the Breeders' Cup Distaff in the fall. For With the Angels, a win over a national champion on home ground would reframe what this New York-bred can accomplish beyond the state-bred stakes she has already outgrown.