Champion Luna Belle Nominated to $100,000 Thirty Eight Go Go
At 0h02, on November 6, 2023 • By LAUREL PARK
Multiple stakes winner and two-time Maryland champion filly Luna Belle, third in her return from a 513-day gap between races last month, and defending champion Hybrid Eclipse top 17 nominees to the $100,000 Thirty Eight Go Go Saturday, Nov. 11 at Laurel Park.
The 1 1/16-mile Thirty Eight Go Go for fillies and mares 3 and up co-headlines the Veterans Day program with a pair of juvenile stakes, the $100,000 Smart Halo for fillies and $100,000 James F. Lewis III, both sprinting six furlongs.
Luna Belle had not raced since last May when she finished a closing third in the seven-furlong Maryland Million Distaff Oct. 14 at Laurel, beaten 4 ¼ lengths by Intrepid Daydream. Owned by Deborah Greene and trainer Hamilton Smith and bred by Smith, Greene and her late father, Fred Greene Jr., Maryland’s champion 2-year-old filly of 2021 and 3-year-old filly of 2022 put together a five-stakes win streak snapped in the 2022 Black-Eyed Susan (G2).
Smith also nominated his and Greene’s I’m Gittin There, a 4-year-old filly that has been third or better in seven of 10 starts this year with three wins, most recently running second behind Maryland’s 2022 Horse of the Year Fille d’Esprit in a seven-furlong optional claiming allowance Sept. 29 at Laurel.
