Sumter headlines wide-open Daytona Stakes at Santa Anita

A 12-horse overflow field has turned the Daytona Stakes into one of Santa Anita’s most intriguing puzzles, with Sumter bringing the strongest recent graded résumé but far from a locked-in answer. The Grade III, worth $100,000 and run at about 6 1/2 furlongs on the hillside turf course, arrives as part of the track’s closing weekend, and the race feels built for an upset if the pace gets messy or the wrong horse is stuck outside at the wrong time.

Sumter earned top billing by winning the San Simeon Stakes on March 14 by a nose, and he did it the way a proven hill horse often does, tracking the pace and finishing the job on the same Santa Anita configuration he will face again. Equibase lists Mike E. Smith, Richard Mandella and the Bass ownership group as the winning connections from that San Simeon score, which also makes Sumter the lone entrant in the Daytona field with a graded victory this year. Still, there are reasons to think he is vulnerable: he came back on April 18 and could manage only fifth over a flat mile, beaten 2 1/4 lengths, so the question is whether his best form reappears once he is back on the downhill turf sprint.

The draw does not make things easier. Smith will break from the far outside, a post that can be tricky on Santa Anita’s signature hillside course, even if it offers a clean run into the long downhill straight. The course itself is one of the track’s calling cards, stretching about 6 1/2 furlongs from the top of the hill to the finish, and Santa Anita added a turf chute in 2020 to accommodate six-furlong and 6 1/2-furlong grass races.

The first upset pathway runs through Mark Glatt’s comeback pair. First Peace returns off an 11-month layoff after winning the 2024 California Crown Eddie D Stakes on Sept. 28 at Santa Anita, when he slipped through a narrow seam on the rail and stopped the clock in 1:11.56 for his first graded stakes victory. Freedom’s Not Free is even more dangerous if he carries his Del Mar Derby speed back to the sprint game, because he set the pace in that race through fractions of 25.00, 49.67, 1:13.85 and 1:37.57 before holding on for second.

A third upset scenario is simply the kind of chaotic, pace-driven hill race Santa Anita often produces. With Zio Jo, Later Than Planned, Irish Royalty and others in the mix, the Daytona has the look of a race that could open up late, especially if Sumter has to work too hard from the outside or if one of the layoff horses fires fresh. Motorious showed how dangerous that can be when he won the 2025 Daytona in 1:13.13 off a first start of the year, even though reports said he was only about 90% to 95% fit. That is the kind of precedent that keeps this renewal wide open.