US racing tips: Shane Ketteridge provides his two best Saturday bets

Letruska
8.18pm Oaklawn Park
3pt win

Proxy
9.44pm Keeneland
1pt win

It's not often racing fans are treated to a head-to-head between two reigning champions, but that's what we have in store on Saturday.

Last year’s champion older female Letruska takes on the current champion female sprinter Ce Ce in the $1,000,000 Grade 1 Apple Blossom Handicap at Oaklawn Park.

This is always a hot race and this year is no exception as Grade 1 winners Clairiere and Maracuja also line up with outsider Miss Imperial completing a field of five fillies and mares.

The last two runnings have been won by the two champions with Ce Ce in 2020 and Letruska downing the brilliant Monomoy Girl by a nose last year.

In Letruska we have a mare of outstanding talent. She’s a six-year-old who has won 18 of her 24 races and seems to be improving with age.

After winning this last season, she reeled off four successive Graded wins, three of which were at the top level, and she took them all with her trademark front-running style. She loves dominating a small field, which is what we have here.

Her only blip last season was finishing tenth in the Breeders’ Cup Distaff, but she went off too fast on that occasion and may have been showing the effects of a long season.

However, she returned this year to win the Grade 3 Royal Delta at Gulfstream Park in February and Fausto Gutierrez’s mare can make all the running under Jose Ortiz to land back-to-back victories in this race.

At Keeneland, the $300,000 Grade 3 Ben Ali Stakes for older horses over a 1m½f on the dirt can go to Godolphin-owned Proxy, who recorded a career-best speed figure when finishing second in a Grade 2 last time, can win this for Michael Stidham and his team.

The feeling is we have yet to see the best of this son of Tapit since he’s been running in Graded company, but he’s still been performing well and has hit the board in three stakes races so far, giving the impression he’ll win one of these sooner rather than later.

That most recent second behind Olympiad was a good run as the winner got first run and this colt ran all the way to the line, so if Proxy turns up in the same mood, he'll be the one they all have to beat.

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