The weekend stakes featured plenty of outcomes with Breeders' Cup implications. But while top-level races in California, Kentucky and New York yielded headline horses bound for the big Saturday of championship weekend, an ungraded $125,000 grass route for 2-year-old fillies in Maryland produced one of the more intriguing, under-the-radar candidates for Future Stars Friday.
Ultimate Love is now 3-for-3 after her stylish, four-length, going-away score in the Selima Stakes at Laurel Park, and the chestnut daughter of Curlin could be bound for the GI Juvenile Fillies Turf.
A homebred from Charlotte Weber's Live Oak Plantation and Stud in Florida, Ultimate Love has won her three starts by a combined 13 1/4 lengths.
She rallied from fifth and last to dismantle a one-mile maiden special weight field by 2 3/4 lengths at Colonial Downs July 24, then stalked and pounced to blow open a first-level allowance by 6 ¾ lengths at Laurel Sept. 5. She was the third- and second-favorite in those respective starts, and got bet down to 3-2 favoritism for the nine-runner Selima on Sept. 27.
Stretching out to 1 1/16 miles, Ultimate Love broke running but willingly settled outside in fourth by the time the field cornered onto the backstretch. Moving at a confident clip, jockey Jorge Ruiz nudged Ultimate Love to take closer aim at the leaders on the far turn, and she incrementally closed the gap, always in control of the cadence while ratcheting up the pressure.
Ultimate Love came over the top in mid-stretch, requiring only token left-handed encouragement before Ruiz switched back to a hand ride. After building momentum for the better part of two furlongs, the filly quickened with a nice flash of foot through a final sixteenth clocked in :6.01 over ground rated firm.
Her final time of 1:43.58 was .85 seconds faster than 2-year-old males ran in the same-distance Laurel Futurity Stakes a half-hour earlier (also won by Ruiz).
“She might be a good one,” trainer Michael Trombetta told the Laurel notes team as Ultimate Love cooled out on her way back to the barn.
Ultimate Love's pedigree backs up her conditioner's assessment: Her second dam is My Typhoon (Ire), a GISW grass mare in North America who is a half-sister to champions Galileo (Ire) and Sea The Stars (Ire).
Live Oak paid a sales-topping (more than triple the price of the next most expensive offering) $2.9 million for her at the 2002 Tattersalls December Foal Sale, and My Typhoon earned back $1.3 million in purses, much of it on an eight-race tear in 2006-07 during which she racked up triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures in eight consecutive stakes.
“Very laid back,” Trombetta described his filly, who is the sixth foal but first stakes winner out of the 0-for-1 Bernardini mare Tsunami of Love. “I told [Ruiz] in the paddock today that you have a good post. Hopefully, you can find a good spot that you like, and he did a good job of it. I was a little concerned when [the Todd Pletcher-trained second favorite] got loose [on the lead].”
Ultimate Love wouldn't be the first recent victress of the Selima to go on to win the Juvenile Fillies Turf. The Graham Motion-trained Sharing upset the 2019 edition of that Breeders' Cup stakes at Santa Anita. She was 13-1 in the betting after winning at Laurel as the 1-2 favorite.
“Those thoughts crossed my mind as she crossed the finish line,” Trombetta said of the Oct. 31 Juvenile Fillies Turf at Del Mar.
But a go in the Breeders' Cup would necessitate a cutback in distance to a flat mile for Ultimate Love, who looked very much in her comfort zone stretching out to 1 1/16 miles.
“Curlin will get you dirt. The dam side is more turf,” Trombetta said. “What I like about this filly is that I think she's going to be a mile-and-an-eighth, mile-and-a-quarter type of filly.”
Dan Delivers
The bust-through-traffic stretch rally by 2024 GI Kentucky Derby winner Mystik Dan (Goldencents) in the GII D. Wayne Lukas Classic at Churchill Downs put a tactical exclamation point on a race that was additionally dramatic because it honored the recently deceased Hall-of-Fame trainer and played out against the backdrop of Mystik Dan's regular rider, Brian Hernandez Jr., being hospitalized last week after a Churchill spill broke seven ribs and punctured a lung.
Mystik Dan (rail) | Coady Media
Trainer Ken McPeek said that he's leaning toward the GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile for Mystik Dan, but he's not entirely ruling out the GI Classic.
He also believes jockey Francisco Arrieta did well subbing for the stable's go-to rider, but he's still not sure who will be aboard Mystik Dan in his next start because there's a possibility Hernandez could be cleared to resume riding by the Breeders' Cup.
“It's tough. Brian helped this horse get here,” McPeek said in a video interview posted by the Kentucky Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association. “He really deserved to be on him today, and he deserves to be on him next time, too. But, you know, in the meantime, Francisco Arrieta did a fantastic job, and we'll probably sit down and discuss whether Francisco rides him back. I think what he did [Saturday], he deserves to ride him back. Of course, that's all assuming that Brian could be back in that quick of a time, but that's out of my control.
“He had every reason to get beat,” McPeek said of Mystik Dan. “It got tight. He got locked in there. It looked like he wasn't going to get through. But that shows the kind of turn of foot he's got. He can turn it over hard and fast. Like Francisco said, he's like a Maserati. You press the pedal, and he goes.”
On aiming for the Dirt Mile, a stakes that was won by Mystik Dan's sire in both 2013 and 2014, McPeek said, “I think this race probably points him toward the [Dirt] Mile, as a stallion prospect, I think the [Dirt] Mile's a really good spot for him.”
With his victory on Saturday, four months after his score in the GIII Blame Stakes, Mystik Dan accomplished something no other Derby winner has done in more than two decades: Win at least two races at age four.
Funny Cide, the 2003 Derby winner, was 3-2-3 in 10 starts during his 4-year-old season of 2004.
Oddly enough, another Derby winner whose career extended long past the Triple Crown, California Chrome in 2014, did not win a race at age 4 (0-for-2) even though he rebounded to win seven races at age 5.
Prior to Funny Cide, the most recent Derby winners to win more than once during their 4-year-old seasons were Real Quiet (2-for-5) and Silver Charm (6-for-9), the 1998 and 1997 Derby champs.
Beyer Roundup
Mystik Dan's tally in the nine-furlong Lukas Classic came back as a 100 on the Beyer scale, one point higher than his victory in the Blame, but one point lower than his subsequent fourth in the GI Stephen Foster Stakes. Since the Foster, he also once tried the turf, registering a 94 when fourth in the GI Arlington Million.
At Aqueduct, 'TDN Rising Star, presented by Hagyard' Locked (Gun Runner) was assigned a 98 Beyer for his win in the three-horse GII Woodward Stakes.
Locked was disadvantaged in having to chase down loose-on-the-lead favorite Phileas Fogg (Astern {Aus}) over nine furlongs. But that pacemaker was shortening stride late in the lane when Locked mounted his late-race bid, switching off the inside to collar him by three-quarters of a length. Still, the victory firmed up a launch pad for Locked to take aim at the Breeders' Cup Classic.
At Santa Anita, both 1 1/2-length winner Nevada Beach (Omaha Beach) and runner-up Full Serrano (Arg) (Full Mast) appear Breeders' Cup-bound, but they will point toward separate races after their respective finishes at 8-1 and 1-2 odds in the nine-furlong GI Goodwood Stakes.
Their Beyers came back 101 and 98. Nevada Beach will target the Classic. Full Serrano appears destined for a return engagement in the Dirt Mile. Read more from their trainers here.
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