Om N Joy faces turf test in Fran’s Valentine Stakes at Santa Anita

Grand Slam Smile turned the Fran’s Valentine Stakes into a verdict on the California-bred female turf pecking order, while Om N Joy came back with more questions than answers. At one mile on the Santa Anita turf, Grand Slam Smile won in 1:35.94 and pulled clear as the mare most ready to carry the state-bred banner into bigger summer spots.

The race carried a guaranteed purse of $100,000, with $60,000 to the winner, and drew seven starters after one scratch. Grand Slam Smile broke from post 3 and handled the assignment like a mare who knew exactly where she belonged. William Antongeorgi III said she was “relaxed and broke great,” and Sean McCarthy called her “totally professional” after the race, adding that she was still about $20,000 short of $1 million in earnings. With the victory, her record improved to 11 starts, 6 wins, 4 seconds and 1 third, with $526,400 in bankroll.

That mattered because Grand Slam Smile was not simply beating up on an ordinary state-bred field. The 4-year-old daughter of Smiling Tiger had already taken a swing in the Grade 3 Royal Heroine on turf at Santa Anita on April 25 and came right back into Golden State Series company looking every bit like the class of the division. In a landscape where California-bred stakes often become launch pads for open-company ambitions, she looked like the mare most likely to make the jump.

Om N Joy, by contrast, was the story of a horse trying to solve a different puzzle. The 4-year-old California-bred daughter of Om, out of Margie’s Minute by Hard Spun, had not raced on turf since her first two starts in the winter of 2024-25, both sprint maiden races in which she ran third. She then moved to dirt and rattled off five straight wins, including the Grade 3 Torrey Pines at Del Mar in August, before a fifth-place finish in the Grade 1 Apple Blossom at Oaklawn Park. Trainer Aggie Ordonez had said the grass switch was the biggest concern, even as he noted the mare had matured and that her early turf runs were not poor.

The race never let her settle into the answer. Sent away from the outside in post 8, the only runner drawn there, Om N Joy was seventh under Kent Desormeaux. Her career line now stands at 16 starts, 5 wins, 0 seconds, 5 thirds and $496,703, but the most important number may be the one that remains missing: proof that her form on dirt translates when the surface changes and the trip gets tricky.

For California-bred racing, the result sharpened the hierarchy. Grand Slam Smile looks like the more credible summer stakes horse right now. Om N Joy still has the pedigree and enough dirt class to matter, but until she answers the turf question, she remains more project than pillar.