Monday Morning Message with Jason Beem Mar. 30, 2026

Jason looks back at the weekend and talks about a potential budding star that debuted at Tampa on Sunday. 

A good Monday morning to you all! Big weekend in the books, and next week is honestly my favorite of the big Kentucky Derby (G1) prep weekends with Keeneland opening up as well as the Wood Memorial (G2) and Santa Anita Derby (G1) cards. We’ll be talking lots about all of them on the podcast this week, and we certainly talked a lot about the Florida Derby (G1) and Arkansas Derby (G1) cards on the Monday pod. 

To touch on those preps really quickly here, I was so crushed for The Puma as he got caught in the last jump on a wicked head-bob to lose the Florida Derby to Commandment. I was happy he vindicated his Tampa Bay Derby (G3) win with a solid effort, but with 50 yards to go I thought he was going to pull it off. But alas, Commandment surged and got the bob. I do think the top three from the Florida Derby, including Chief Wallabee, will all be top five or six choices in the Kentucky Derby. They got a solid figure for the Florida Derby, and along with Renegade, as of now feel like the more logical contenders. Certainly a few more horses will add their names to the top choice list here this coming weekend. 

I like to use the Monday column to talk about something I loved from this weekend, and one of the cool horses we saw here at Tampa on Sunday was a three-year-old filly named Parfois. She was running in the 11th and last race of the day on our Florida Cup Day, one of the few races that wasn’t for Florida-breds. I love that we get to celebrate our state-bred runners on days like Sunday, and we saw some good performances including Damon’s Mound jumping up over the $1 million earnings mark. A true racehorse! 

But back to Parfois. If you pull up your TwinSpires replay archive, go back to August 5, 2025. Scroll down to replays for the French track La Teste De Buch – trust me it’s on there! And click on the second race to watch the debut of Parfois. If you don’t feel like accessing our great replay archive, then I’ll just tell you she overcame some trouble, then caused some trouble, then roared by horses in late stretch to get up and win. But that trouble she caused? Well, she got disqualified. 

So after several months she ended up at Tampa Bay Downs on Sunday, running in a maiden special weight race that looked to have some promising horses in it. Well, she settled back towards the back in typical Chad Brown running style. 

Then Parfois absolutely started to inhale runners on the turn before going eight or nine paths wide into the stretch. But then she just blew their doors off and opened up to win by six lengths or so in the end. It was pretty eye-catching. Not as dramatic as her debut. and she still was kind of green in the lane, but she’s a runner. 

Keep an eye out for her this summer. It’s one of the truly cool things about horse racing that you just never know what you’re going to see on a given day. You might see something brilliant or something crazy! 

Hope everyone had a great day!