If one can “burst onto the scene,” can one also “burst off the scene?” That’s how Simply Joking’s trajectory maps. The filly debuted Dec. 26 winning the Letellier Stakes at Fair Grounds, then stretched from that sprint to a Jan. 18 route and led all the way landing the Silverbulletday. Ten weeks later, Simply Joking finally swings back into action as one of 10 3-year-old fillies entered in the Grade 2, $750,000 Fantasy at Oaklawn Park. “It does seem like a long time since she ran,” trainer Whit Beckman said. “I’m ready to get her back in a race.” The 1 1/16-mile Fantasy, a major Kentucky Oaks prep (100, 50, 25, 15, and 10 Oaks qualifying points to the first five finishers), is longer on numbers than proven quality. The morning line has Simply Joking the 8-5 favorite over 2-1 Quietside. :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. Anyone else winning qualifies as an upset. Only Take Charge Milady at 6-1 is listed lower than double-digit odds. Take Charge Milady easily bested a troubled Quietside in the Martha Washington at Oaklawn but followed that with a distant 10th in the Feb. 23 Honeybee won by Quietside. Take Charge Milady got pinched back at the start and encountered some traffic while racing too far behind on a speed-favoring track, but all that doesn’t account for the nature of her defeat. Trainer Kenny McPeek termed the performance a “head scratcher” and said the filly has since trained well at Fair Grounds. Simply Joking wintered at Fair Grounds before shipping Tuesday to Oaklawn, and while this gap between starts wasn’t intended, Beckman doesn’t mind it. Entered in the Rachel Alexandra on Feb. 15, Simply Joking contracted a minor illness a few days before the race, leading to her scratch, but by March 2 she’d returned to the work tab. Beckman considered the March 22 Fair Grounds Oaks before deciding an extra week offered better timing toward the Kentucky Oaks, should Simply Joking earn a start there. Beckman believes she will. He had high hopes for Simply Joking well before her debut, and Simply Joking, a daughter of Practical Joke, hasn’t disappointed. She made mistakes in the Letellier that would’ve gotten most first-time starters beat and still prevailed with a good 85 Beyer Speed Figure. In the Silverbulletday, she set a solid pace, and while some believe fatigue caused Simply Joking to change leads and lose momentum in the final half-furlong, Beckman insists, with merit, his charge lacked focus and merely raced greenly. Reengaged at the wire, she galloped out strongly with her ears up. Runner-up Bless the Broken won the Bourbonette Oaks last weekend; third-place Drexel Hill – trained by Beckman – captured the Busher at Aqueduct. “She’s been training as good as a horse can train for a race like this,” Beckman said. The two favorites should race forwardly. Simply Joking will break from post 7 with Jaime Torres aboard, while Jose Ortiz rides Quietside again from post 5. Ortiz rode Quietside for the first time when she broke a five-race losing streak – all competitive efforts in stakes races – wearing down pacesetting Five G in the Honeybee. Quietside endured a tough trip finishing second in the Martha Washington, and in her previous defeats chased two leading members of her class, Good Cheer and Immersive. “It was just a matter of her maturing mentally and physically,” trainer John Ortiz said. Quietside has worked three times since the Honeybee, her March 16 drill a bullet five furlongs in 59.60 seconds. “We were not trying to rate her in the morning. Just let her do what she wants to do, which is go fast. That bullet work was on purpose. She was out there just in gallop. You couldn’t ask for a better workout,” Ortiz said. The workouts are over. Quietside now faces a fresh New Orleans invader with a Kentucky Oaks berth on the line. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.