VERNON, NY – Looking every bit like the Mission Brief of 2014, the 3-year-old filly scored her biggest win of the year in yesterday’s Zweig Memorial for fillies at Vernon Downs. Buoyed by the performance, trainer Ron Burke afterward declared that Mission Brief will start in the Hambletonian rather than the Hambletonian Oaks.

“We’re going (to the Hambletonian),” said Burke. “The plan has always been to go as long as she was good and today at Vernon she was as good as she has ever been. She had to be super and she was.”

In the Hambletonian, she will face, among others, Pinkman, the winner of yesterday’s Zweig for males for trainer Jimmy Takter. Gingras is the regular driver of both Mission Brief and Pinkman and will have to chose between the two.