Bigger game may be in sight for Just a Touch, Big Cuddle
Impressed in Delaware stakes wins
Frank Vespe
June 17, 2026
At least two of Saturday’s stakes winners at Delaware Park may be en route to bigger things.
Five-year-old Just a Touch, making just his second start on the lawn, improved to two-for-two turfing when he thrashed a good field in the $200,000 Cape Henlopen Stakes. Then in the very next race, Big Cuddle dominated the Delaware Derby, and he, similarly, is two-for-two going two turns.
For both, graded stakes could be on the horizon.
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The Cape Henlopen, contested at a mile-and-a-half, was full of proven turfers: Grade 2 winner Desvio, multiple stakes winner Anegada, defending champ Vote No, 2025 Kent Stakes winner Soleil Volant.
Meanwhile, despite being five with a bankroll approaching $800,000 and a pair of Grade 1 placings to his credit, Just a Touch was all potential and unanswered questions. He had made a single career turf start, a last out win going 1 1/16 miles in a Keeneland allowance.
“He kept knocking on the door in Grade Ones, so we didn’t really pull the trigger on the turf races,” explained Trace Messina, assistant to trainer Brad Cox. “And then last time we did it at Keeneland, and obviously today going a mile-and-a-half, he loved it.”
Just a Touch, by Justify and out of a Tapit mare, was second in the 2024 Blue Grass and third in the 2025 Met Mile, both Grade 1 races on the dirt. But it’s safe to say he’s found a home going long on the lawn.
“This is what he wants to do,” Messina said. “I think a mile and three eighths and beyond is probably in his wheelhouse.”
In the Cape Henlopen, Just a Touch and rider Irad Ortiz grabbed the early lead, rebuffed a challenge from Freedom’s Way after a mile, and went on to win by 3 ½ lengths. Soleil Volant, Vote No, and Desvio were in a three-horse tussle for second, third, and fourth.
After going a mile in 1:39.94, Just a Touch threw down consecutive sub-24 second quarters to close the gate on his rivals. It was the kind of win that gives connections confidence.
“Maybe a race like the [11-furlong, Grade 2] United Nations [at Monmouth Park July 18] will be up his wheelhouse, and obviously you have Kentucky Downs looming in September,” Messina said. “The money’s good this time of year on the grass.”
The money’s also good for three-year-olds, especially those that can go a route of ground.
It wasn’t clear that Big Cuddle was one of those until May 16. That’s when, wearing blinkers for the first time and trying two turns after three sprints, he outfought the well-regarded, Brad Cox-trained Final Story to win the restricted Sir Barton Stakes by a half-length.
Then on Saturday, he dominated the $300,000 Delaware Derby, defeating Phil D’Amato trainee Out of the Woods by four lengths, with Cox’s Sovereign Law another length-and-a-half farther back.
Trainer Gary Capuano, always cautious, said he was “gradually moving” to trying Big Cuddle, a son of Great Notion, in graded stakes company. It was Capuano’s decision to give Big Cuddle the winter off following his Oct. 11 Maryland Million Nursery win, to bring him back going short, and then to stretch him out to two turns for the Sir Barton.
“Whatever Gary says, we do,” said John Madden, who races as Pocket 3’s Racing.
That’s not to say he doesn’t have thoughts of his own on where he’d like to see Big Cuddle next out. In fact, if he has his way, it’ll be on the same day, and at the same track, as Just a Touch’s possible next start.
“A dream of mine is to get to the [Grade 1] Haskell,” Madden said. “I grew up in Monmouth, New Jersey, half a mile from the track. Went to the track every Sunday with my dad.”
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