Jimmy P targets familiar Saratoga hurdles in Beverly R. Steinman return
Jimmy P has won two straight Jonathan Sheppards at Saratoga, including a 34 1/2-length rout. The Beverly R. Steinman will show whether that Spa edge still outweighs age and class questions.
Saratoga has become Jimmy P’s proving ground, and that is the whole story heading into the Grade 1 Beverly R. Steinman. The 8-year-old Slumber gelding has gone 2-for-4 over the Saratoga jumps, and the results are loud enough to make the venue itself look like an edge in the horse’s form rather than just a setting for it.
Jimmy P returns to the Spa after back-to-back victories in the Jonathan Sheppard, a race he won by 34 1/2 lengths in 2024 after the favorite fell, then repeated in 2025 by three-quarters of a length over Zarak the Brave in 4:36.83. That 2024 margin remains the largest winning spread in the race’s history since 1976, and only four horses have ever won the Jonathan Sheppard in consecutive years: Happy Intellectual, Double Bill, Yaw and Jimmy P. That kind of company is why this Saratoga return matters beyond one graded hurdle.
The Beverly R. Steinman, a $150,000 Grade 1 steeplechase for older horses at 2 3/8 miles, will be Race 1 on the opening card of the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival on Wednesday, June 3. The five-day festival runs at Saratoga Race Course from June 3 through June 7 and includes 25 stakes races, with the 158th Belmont Stakes set for Saturday, June 6, at 7:04 p.m. ET. Opening day is New York Showcase Day, with six New York-bred stakes on the card, so Jimmy P will set the tone for a loaded week before the flat races even get rolling.
That backdrop sharpens the question around Jimmy P. He was fifth in the G1 Commonwealth Cup on May 2, a race Keri Brion viewed more as conditioning than a measuring stick, and the move back out to 2 3/8 miles should suit him better. Blinkers are also coming off, another sign the barn wants him to settle into the rhythm that has produced his best Saratoga work.
Brion’s confidence is not built on sentiment. NYRA reported that she finished 2025 with 44 wins and more than $2.3 million in purse earnings, which gives her opinion real weight when she says this horse thrives at the Spa. The Beverly R. Steinman itself is still young, with Awakened winning the inaugural running in 2024 at Belmont at the Big A and Proven Innocent taking the 2025 edition, but Jimmy P enters as the most Saratoga-shaped horse in the field. If course comfort is ever going to override questions about age and class, this is the kind of race where it happens.
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