A pair of Maryland-breds earned stakes placings Thursday at Saratoga.

Seeking to defend her title in Thursday’s Grade 2, $200,000 Intercontinental Stakes at Saratoga, Future Is Now delivered a resolute effort in defeat, settling for second behind a front-running Pipsy (IRE).

Running time for 5 ½ furlongs over firm turf was 1:00.98. The race for fillies and mares was one of the featured events on Day One of the Belmont Stakes Racing Festival.

Trained in Maryland by Michael Trombetta and owned by the estate of her late breeder, R. Larry Johnson, Future Is Now entered the Intercontinental with a sharp win in the Grade 3 Giant’s Causeway and a career tally of eight wins from 15 starts. Unsettled in the gate but away in good order, she raced in close attendance to the pace before being briefly checked off heels approaching the half-mile pole. Taken in hand along the rail, jockey Paco Lopez angled her through an inside trip but couldn’t get to the winner.led the challenge.

“I was in great position and then she opened up a little bit and I had to come up the rail,” Future Is Now’s rider, Paco Lopez, said. “She still had room in the one hole, and she closed down a little bit but she [Pipsy] never came back.”

Future Is Now held off the late-charging Kairyu (IRE) to earn the place spot by three-quarters of a length. The runner-up finish brought her career earnings to nearly $790,000.

Future Is Now, off as the favorite, paid $4.30 to place and $3.40 to show, while Pipsy returned $12.40 as the fourth choice. The $1 exacta with Pipsy returned $30.25.

Several races earlier, another Maryland-bred, two-year-old Romeo, kicked off the card with a third-place finish in the $150,000 Tremont Stakes.

A dominant winner at Laurel Park at first asking, Romeo, by Honor A. P., went off the third choice in a five-horse field and had no answers for either the winner, the filly Mythical, or the runner-up, favored Blinging It Back. Romeo finished 11 ¼ lengths behind the winner and a neck better than fourth-place finisher Baytown Dreamer.

Bred in Maryland by John Davison, Romeo is trained by John Robb for Joseph Lloyd and was ridden by Xavier Perez.