Air travel for horses has become much more complicated with the Texas Sutton equine charters temporarily shut down. But California’s Soothsay and Lady Aces made their way to Indiana Grand via FedEx for today’s $300,000 Grade 3 Indiana Oaks.

French-born Flavien Prat comes in from California to ride Soothsay and Italian product Umberto Rispoli will be aboard Lady Aces.

Soothsay captured the Grade 2 Santa Anita Oaks in her second career start, then was second in the track’s Grade 2 Summertime Oaks. She’s trained by Hall of Famer Richard Mandella, who also trained her mama, the graded-stakes winner Spellbound.

“She runs hard every time,” said Taylor Cambra, Mandella’s assistant trainer. “There was really no excuse in her last race. She ran well. She just got beat by a better horse that day. She’s still young and still developing. We’re hoping she still has a lot more gears to her. She’s maturing and growing up. We’ll do our best to keep her fresh, get her ready and see what she’s got.”

Trained by Peter Eurton, Lady Aces finished third in the Summertime Oaks, also in her third start.

“This is a good spot,” said Thomas Dubaele. “There was nothing really in California. Hopefully she’ll like the track. I see it might rain. We don’t have rain, really, in California, so we don’t know how she’ll handle that. She’s training well, eating well, looks happy. She’s a very nice filly. The race came up pretty tough. We’ll take a shot. Umberto really likes this filly, or he wouldn’t come all the way here to ride her.”

Not only will the fillies be facing a new racing surface, they’ll be facing a full field for the first time with the Indiana Oaks attracting 11 entries. By contrast, the Santa Anita and Summertime Oaks had only four starters apiece.