MEMORIAL Day in the US last Monday saw a high quality card at Santa Anita with three Grade 1s up for grabs.

The Michael McCarthy-trained four-year-old Smooth Like Strait got compensation for some narrow losses when he ran out an impressive winner of the Grade 1 Shoemaker Mile on turf. It was a well- deserved win after he had been beaten by just a head in the Grade 1 Hollywood Derby, a neck in Grade 1 Frank Kilroe Mile, and he was just a neck behind dead-heaters Domestic Spending and Colonel Liam in the Grade 1 Old Foresters Classic at the Derby meeting in Churchill Downs.