Trainer Jorge Delgado has ambitious plans this year for Grade 1 winner Power Squeeze that he hopes will ultimately end in the Breeders’ Cup. The next step toward that goal is Sunday’s $100,000 Serena’s Song Stakes at Monmouth Park, when his star filly marks her return off a six-week layoff.

The millionaire daughter of Union Rags will face five fillies and mares in the mile and 70 feature.

“This spot makes sense for her since we’re stabled at Monmouth. She doesn’t have to travel,” said Delgado. “Our ultimate goal is the Breeders’ Cup. So we’re planning a three or four-race campaign for the summer and this is the starting point for her.

“She needs to get into the winner’s circle again. The (Grade 3, $500,000) Molly Pitcher on Haskell Stakes day is in our mind. So we want to see how this race goes and go from there.”

The 35-year-old Delgado, a native of Maracaibo, Venezuela, also has high hopes for Cool Intentions in Saturday’s $100,000 Long Branch Stakes for 3-year-olds, hoping to use the race as a stepping stone to either the NYRA Bets Pegasus Stakes on June 14 at Monmouth Park or the June 7 Belmont Stakes.

Cool Intentions, a son of 2020 Haskell Stakes winner Authentic, was briefly on the Triple Crown trail before faltering in the Grade 1 Florida Derby in his last start.

“Taking away his last two starts we thought he would be a Kentucky Derby-caliber horse,” said Delgado. “He probably had too many races too closely (four in 65 days after starting his career last Oct. 19). I think it took something out of him.

“He has been doing good since the Florida Derby. I am optimistic he will get back to where he was early in his career.”

The Long Brach Stakes, for 3-year-olds, is also at a mile and 70 yards.

But in Delgado’s 52-horse stable at Monmouth Park it’s Power Squeeze who gets special attention.

The Kentucky-bred 4-year-old has six wins and three seconds from 14 career starts, with three graded stakes wins. The highlight, of course, was photo finish win over the Todd Pletcher-trained Candied in the Grade 1 Alabama Stakes at Saratoga on Aug. 17 last summer.

While that is Delgado’s only Grade 1 winner in a career that began in 2017, it came with “mixed emotions,” he said. It was a year earlier that his unbeaten New York Thunder broke down in the Grade 1 H. Allen Jerkens Memorial race.

“New York Thunder was a horse everyone loved. He was definitely the favorite in our barn,” Delgado said. “It took me almost a full year to go back to Saratoga because of that. We went back to the same environment and it brought back a lot of memories.”

Power Squeeze comes in off a solid second-place finish to White Abbario in the Grade 3 Ghostzapper Stakes at Gulfstream Park on March 29. In her prior race she also faced males in the Grade 1 Pegasus World Cup at Gulfstream. She was eighth that race.

“I think my confidence was too high when we raced her against boys in the Pegasus,” said Delgado, whose uncle Gustavo Delgado won the 2023 Kentucky Derby with Mage.

He said Power Squeeze’s maturity is noticeable.

“You can see it in the way she behaves, how professional she is now when she goes to the track,” he said. “She is much more calm now.”

First race post time for Monmouth Park’s opening weekend is 12:50 p.m.