Luv Your Neighbor breaks through in G3 Delaware Oaks
First stakes win follows five runner-up finishes
Frank Vespe
June 13, 2026
After a campaign spent knocking on doors that wouldn’t open, Luv Your Neighbor tried a different approach in Saturday’s Grade 3, $300,000 Delaware Oaks.
She kicked the damn door in.
Luv Your Neighbor, second or third in all four starts this year and six of eight overall, rallied from off the pace under Luis Saez, wore down local hopeful Jumping the Gun, and inched away to win by 1 ¼ lengths in 1:44.05 for 1 1/16 miles. It was her first stakes victory.
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“She’s run against the very best three-year-old fillies out there, and it was just when was going to be the day that she was going to get her chance, and today was the day,” said Michael Stidham, who trains the Ontario-bred Luv Your Neighbor for Roy and Gretchen Jackson’s Lael Stables.
That, of course, felt better than his observation earlier in the week: “I hate to lose, so every time she finishes second it’s hard to take.”
The win perhaps resulted in part from a slight change in tactics. In prior starts, Luv Your Neighbor, by Constitution, had been close to the pace; but she usually loomed and then hung in the lane.
Today she was fifth after a quarter-mile doled out by Maryland-based Dazzling Dame in 23.76 seconds and still third and 2 ½ lengths behind that rival after a half in 47.82.
“Today we said, look, there’s some speed to maybe set it up for us,” Stidham explained. “[Saez] sat a little bit off of it, and then made his move when he needed to, so we got lucky, and today was her day.”
Luv Your Neighbor moved to near-even terms with Dazzling Dame and Jumping the Gun after three quarters, and while Dazzling Dame gradually succumbed, Jumping the Gun fought the good fight. She and Luv Your Neighbor were still just heads apart with a furlong to go.
But this time, the horse who kept finishing second refused to do so.
“I told Saez before the race, I said, ‘Look, you know her, you know what to do. Looks like there’s a little bit of speed, so maybe we don’t use her as much early and see if we can time it to get there in time,’” Stidham explained.
Jumping the Gun held second, and Dazzling Dame was third.
Luv Your Neighbor notched her second victory from nine career starts and has earnings of nearly $475,000. She paid $6.80 to win as the second choice.
It made for a satisfying outcome for the connections, who have continually thrown their filly in deep waters and watched as she tried hard, ran well, but couldn’t quite seal the deal. Today she did.
Another factor that may have helped, Stidham intimated earlier in the week, was that Luv Your Neighbor is part of Stidham’s Delaware string. As a result, she had had three works over the strip.
“Delaware can be a funny racetrack, a little bit, you know, tough track to get over sometimes,” Stidham said. “We feel like training on it was a little bit of an advantage.”
Was it?
It seems notable that the first two finishers both are currently based here, as Jumping the Gun is trained here by Andy Simoff. In addition, three of the day’s four dirt stakes went to Delaware-based horses, the lone exception being Chasten, the overwhelming 1-2 winner of the Obeah.
Still, you don’t want to take credit from Luv Your Neighbor, who’s danced every dance and continues to run high-quality races.
“I’ve trained a lot of nice fillies over the years, and this is one that she’s got a constitution that you wouldn’t believe,” Stidham said. “She’s in good physical condition after a lot of hard races and shipping, and she’s able to just withstand it. Some fillies, you run them this many times against that competition, and they shrivel up, and you got nothing left, but this filly has just a really strong constitution.”
NOTES Jockey Irad Ortiz, Jr. won three stakes on the day, scoring aboard Dona Clota in the Grade 3 Robert G. Dick Memorial and the impressive Just a Touch in the Cape Henlopen, both on the grass… He also piloted Chasten to a six-length triumph in the $150,000 Obeah… Forest Boyce and the Ned Allard-trained Quint’s Brew teamed up to win the Alapocas Run by a half-length over Haileysfirstnotion… Delaware handled a track-record $8.6 million on the 12-race program, surpassing last year’s total of nearly $6.4 million…
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